On Fear
By last count, I have coded 7 Visual Novels this year alone. I also have some other non-VN projects started and wrapped. I say last count because there's no promise I won't randomly submit a last minute entry to Winter Jam and Velox Turbo. Do I have anything right now?
No.
Because despite everything, I still freeze in fear whenever I start coding, drawing, writing, ....
I've been dabbling in all sorts of making for almost two decades now, collecting experiences, accumulating knowledge. Usually, once I get things going, I would be swept in the swing and the world would cease to matter. I would obsess over the thing I'm working on until I'm done. I'll have setbacks, I'll have moments of frustrations, but I rarely get discouraged enough to stop. To begin is the most difficult part.
David Bayles and Ted Orland's Art and Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking is a slim volume worth reading. There are so many good pages in here I couldn't choose what to show. It's a strange feeling, the moment where something comes into being, when infinite possibilities gradually narrow as you make one stroke after another, type one word after the other.
Yet, the one trait that has served me well is my penchant to brute force my way into something new, which does include breaking things a lot. I have to learn living on my mistakes, through my mistakes, embracing them, fixing them, covering them... it's gotten me farther than anything else in life, creative or otherwise. Honestly, a big chunk of my impostor's syndrome stemmed from the fact that the success people attributed me to often began as something I hacked together half-blind. This self-consciousness would get me to fall hard on theories and fundamentals, so whenever I have time, I would find bodies of good literature to provide grounds and fill the gaps in my ad hoc methods. Apparently this creates a twisted cycle where it would give me enough fuel for a (somewhat) educated guess next time I have to make one.
So the fear remains, but so does my clumsy attempt at putting one foot forward.
I'm not sure it will ever be gone. Perhaps that's what artmaking is, to overcome your fear every single time, to make a choice every single time. To tell yourself that yes, today you will do it.
It's the joy and grief of physical art too. Every time I choose to move forward, I face the fear of messing up irreparably. I can't turn back time if I like the piece before I apply this or that. It teaches me to let go, that every state is only ephemeral.
Fear is massive. Fear is suffocating. Fear is normal. Fear is not to be feared.
Fear is things I sweep under the rug. Fear is things I fail to confront.
Writing gives shape to my fears. Drawing tells me the sounds of my fears. Coding shows me the depth of my fears.
Beyond that, there is joy in completion, in finishing. There's joy in holding what you make in your hands.
And perhaps, one day, I'll be able to reach out and tell my fears, "It's alright."