Hello I Am Afraid

On making space for fear + Debut Author Academy

I’ve been finding it useful lately to talk about how I am feeling afraid. Maybe it’s obvious, like everyone you see in the street is giving off a silent greeting “hello, good morning, I am afraid.” It seems so clear that it is unnecessary to say out loud. But the more I’ve started saying my fear out loud, the better I seem to feel. When things are scary we numb out, but being numb is, I think, no place from which to be creative—whether in art or political organizing or family life.

I do NOT wish to enter the Elizabeth Gilbert white lady discourse stratosphere and I am no particular stan of hers in general — see this bonkers piece by Jia Tolentino that I think sums it all up quite well — but I do think Gilbert is a real expert on one thing and one thing only: fear.

In her book Big Magic, she writes that she was an extremely fearful child and young adult. She was afraid of everything basically. And then at some point in her twenties, she had a thought: “I somehow figured out that my fear had no variety to it, no depth, no substance, no texture,” Gilbert writes. “I noticed that my fear never changed, never delighted, never offered a surprise twist or an unexpected ending. My fear was a song with only one note—only one word, actually—and that word was ‘STOP!’”

Gilbert got bored of her fear, essentially, and she realized that trying not to feel afraid was a losing battle that actually made her fear more powerful. A few other good moments from Big Magic:

Your fear will always show up–especially when you’re trying to be inventive or innovative. Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome and fear hates uncertain outcome.

Here’s how I’ve learned to deal with my fear: I made a decision a long time ago that if I want creativity in my life—and I do—then I have to make space for fear too. Plenty of space. I decided that I would need to build an expansive enough interior life that my fear and my creativity could peacefully coexist, since it appeared that they would always be together.

So I don’t try to kill off my fear. I don’t go to war against it. Instead, I make space for it. Heaps of space … I allow my fear to live and breathe and stretch out its legs comfortably. It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes, too.

Gilbert even has an extended metaphor in the book about her creative work as a road trip and how whenever she’s about to begin a new project she gives a big speech addressing fear in which she invites fear to come along in the car to wherever she and creativity are going. Fear is allowed to have a seat and it’s allowed to have a voice, she writes, but it is not allowed to decide where she’s going or touch anything in the car, including the music.

It can feel cringe to follow Elizabeth Gilbert anywhere but this is where I find myself, digging up an old paperback of Big Magic and reading that section on fear again. She didn’t invent the idea, obviously, that being afraid is actually better than pretending not to be afraid. I’ve taught two writing workshops recently — one on Rebuilding a Creative Practice and one on Jumpstarting a Novel (I write to you currently from Mexico where that one, which has been a total joy, is wrapping up) and I’ve started both of them by talking about fear. Something happens when we spend time there, acknowledging that we are afraid. “It’s the acknowledgement that makes the difference,” one of my students said. “The taking just one moment where I’m not trying to overcome how afraid I feel in order to function.”

So what am I afraid of? Oh, everything. But more specifically, I’m feeling three kinds of fear: World Fear, Industry Fear, and Personal Fear.

1. World Fear

   Edwidge Danticat wrote a new (2025) introduction to her book Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, and she sums up my fears quite succinctly:

   Books are now routinely banned…Immigrants, arrested by masked immigration officers in their homes and on the street, face not only deportation but also detention…The press is regularly attacked by the president and other government officials. Educational and cultural institutions are threatened with defunding if they don’t allow the government to dictate how they are run. Historical and cultural figures are erased from government websites because they are considered representative of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are adrift in open seas indeed.

   I’m also very afraid about the fragile ceasefire agreement in Gaza and Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Palestine. Also AI.
   

2. Industry fear. Here’s a quick roundup:

People don’t read
People especially don’t read literary fiction (though people don’t even agree on what literary fiction is)
Editors aren’t buying or supporting the kind of books I respect and want to write
To have a viable career as a writer of the kind of books I want to write, it is necessary either to get very lucky from the jump on your first book (a nearly impossible thing) or to weave a kind of long game spell of dissent and performance theater

3. Personal fear:

I am having trouble with the new novel I am writing. This is normal and fine except for instead of wrestling, really getting down into the trouble, I’ve been avoiding it. Other things are there to use as avoidance mechanisms of course, and they are things that make me the money I need to survive — teaching, and my editorial business.

The thing that is hard about this new novel is that it involves a capital P premise and a capital P plot and I am not used to thinking of myself as a writer of Premises or Plots, though I have written this and this about plot in the past. I don’t want to be writing an episode of Law and Order that is ripped from the headlines. (Unless maybe it’s an episode from very early on in that series; I will die on the hill that original Law and Order, seasons one through say, six are High Art).

I’m afraid that I don’t have the skills or the insight or the sensitivity to write this next novel or that writing it is a mistake. I’m afraid that, since it is about Jewish Things and the world is hopelessly upside down and warped in its current thinking about Jews and trauma and power and harm, that this book won’t find its readers.

OK, so, I have acknowledged. There they are—(most of) my fears. Today.

A few things have been feeling helpful to think about when facing this fear dump.

1. In her introduction to Create Dangerously, Danticat also writes, “This book is not a monologue but rather an ongoing conversation with terror. Artists continue to create even as the threat of authoritarianism grows in the United States and elsewhere.” It seems then that Danticat is not listing all her terrors so that she may run from them or “overcome” them. She’s listing them so that she can be in an “ongoing conversation” with them. Mmm.

2. I also liked this very much from political theorist

   John Ganz
   ‘s Substack Unpopular Front: “I recognize the situation is growing quite frightening, but it is also important to keep in mind that fear is a weapon. Fear is a force multiplier. If you strike terror into people’s hearts, they will obey, far beyond their actual exposure to danger. And the modern dictatorship does not need to rely on bloodcurdling terror of torture and death so much as the fear of nuisance, the fear of trouble, the fear of harassment...Even if your personal circumstances make it difficult for you, where and when you can, do not obey.” Fear is a force multiplier. It is a tactic, not a truth.

3. Re: my personal fears, I found solace in re-reading

   Alexander Chee
   ‘s piece called “How Have You Dealt With Writers Block?” I realized that the idea at the center of the novel I’m trying to write feels both gripping and also possibly very dumb, hokey, even “in poor taste” as Chee puts it. “The original idea for the novel seemed so far away from my idea of myself, even though I was the one who thought of it,” he writes, of his process of writing his second novel set in the world of opera and which includes a murder. “But needing that coherence was a demand of the ego, and not the artist. I needed a bigger idea of myself that included the writing of that novel.” Acknowledging that I was rejecting an idea that is necessary to my book because it feels like “not me” and thus unknown and scary has helped me to see that idea more clearly and see that I as a writer can grow outwards to encompass it. Perhaps I am hokey, I am in poor taste.

I am not saying that things are OK, that we should not be afraid. We should be. Just that, we are, and to pretend otherwise is not only dishonest but creating a barrier to feeling and writing and maybe even to acting. As a final firework, I give you these words from

Sarah Thankam Mathews

’ Substack Thot Pudding which I also keep offering to students:

“Clench your fucking fist and remember who the fuck you are. Live well and defiantly and by your values…Defiance, once you’ve tapped into it, is useful. It can give you an animating energy, it can remind you of your own aliveness and stamina. Anger is better, always, than despair. Take in what they’re doing, what it means. Tell yourself you want to live past this. Live to see their downfall; live to see them die.”

---

Classes

Next up in my series of four low-cost virtual classes is Debut Author Academy.
It’s harder than ever to put out a debut book, and there’s more half-useful information than ever to wade through. What are the things that an author can do that don’t suck and actually move the needle? What are the major milestones every first time author should know about but nobody tells you? Should you hire an independent publicist? Start a Substack and about what? What is reasonable to expect and how can you manage your expectations aka intense dread? May also be used as a way to meet other debut writers to form a cohort of emotional support. Writers publishing a first book in any genre or welcome but information will be geared towards fiction and nonfiction authors.

When: Thursday, November 20, from 8:00pm-9:30 EST, over Zoom. Recorded and available for one week after the class.

To register: Pre-order Fat Swim ($30 with tax) from Books Are Magic (ships anywhere within the US) by Monday, November 17 at 12pm EST. You will be emailed the Zoom link the week of the class and there’s nothing else you need to do! Booksellers & librarians (the lord’s work) get in free, just email info@emmacopleyeisenberg.com. People outside the US may also email proof of purchase from the retailer of your choice.

Toppings

• I’m watching: the Phillies games (sad). The Yankees games (also sad, don’t come for me, I was grandfathered in). Stick on Apple TV+ in which Owen Wilson is surprisingly fun to watch as a pro golfer past his prime who mentors a young phenom. Basically just killing time until Season 2 of The Tovah Feldshuh Show aka Nobody Wants This comes out on October 23.

• I’m reading: The True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine. Just shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, this one got on my radar from a trusted reader and Philly neighbor Oscar aka Literary Henny on IG. I’ve been looking for super immersive and compelling first person narrators and I fell quick for Raja, a queer Lebanese man living with his (very funny) mother, who is offered a (maybe fake?) opportunity to come to the US. Delightful, rich, special.

• I’m listening to: Are You Mad at Me? by Meg Josephson and it is messing me up in the best way. All I had to do was read these two lines of sales copy—”Constantly worried about what people think of you, if they like you, if they’re mad at you? Eternally obsessing over why someone texted with a period instead of an exclamation point?” — and it was a must for me.

• I’m supporting: The Freedom Flotilla, which includes action tabs to advocate for the safe release of flotilla participants including Irish novelist Naoise Dolan.

• In Philly & environs, join me at: this event on October 14 with Alejandro Varela author of the novel Middle Spoon at The Head & the Hand, this event on October 17 with Megha Majumdar author of the novel A Guardian and a Thief (I’ll be in convo with Megha) at the Upper Dublin Library near Fort Washington, PA, and this event on October 18 with Bushra Rehman, author of the novel Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion at 12 Gates Arts.

Yours,
Emma

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