My biggest fear when putting a new short story out there is that the audience won't grasp the core intention that the delicate emotional logic I built will be utterly misinterpreted. I spend weeks, sometimes months, choosing exactly the right metaphor or structuring a specific moment of silence, convinced I’ve laid a trail of breadcrumbs to the heart of the story.
The fear isn't just about someone disliking the story; it's about someone reading the ending and concluding the protagonist was motivated by something trivial or cliché, when I intended their action to be a profound, sacrificial choice. It feels like performing a complex piece of music only for the listener to focus on a squeaky chair. In real life, I had one story where the main character’s quiet act of charity was interpreted by several early readers as an act of passive-aggression. It hit me hard. You realize that once the words leave your keyboard, you lose all control over their meaning. That gap between my intention and the reader's reception is the scariest void of all.
Honestly, my deepest, gut-wrenching fear isn't scathing criticism; it's the absolute and profound silence. You spend all that time pouring your most intimate thoughts, observations, and skills into 2,000 or 3,000 words, editing until you can’t look at the text anymore, only for it to land with a damp thud and generate zero response. It’s the equivalent of throwing a beautiful glass bottle with a message into the ocean and watching it immediately sink three feet from the shore.
When a video I posted recently stalled at 684 views with a 6.1% watched full video rate, I felt that same sting of rejection. It’s not just about the numbers; it’s the sense that the connection you tried to make simply didn't happen. Silence implies irrelevance. It makes you wonder: Was the voice too weak? Was the subject too niche? Did I invest all that vulnerability for absolutely no one to care? That sound of nothing is far more deafening than the sound of angry feedback.
This fear is intellectual and pervasive. When I finally hit "publish," my stomach clenches with the thought: What if this isn't original at all? What if I've just accidentally regurgitated a plot, a character dynamic, or even a specific line from something I read years ago? The human brain is a funny thing; it stores thousands of stories, and sometimes, what feels like a stroke of genius is just the unconscious recall of a forgotten trope.
I had a moment after publishing a story about time travel where a reader pointed out a nearly identical plot device in a niche TV show from the early 90s. I had never seen the show, but the parallel was undeniable. The crushing realization was that the feeling of having created something new and fresh was simply an illusion. This fear makes you feel like an imposter a mere collector and rearranger of borrowed parts, rather than a true inventor. It's the anxiety that your unique creative fingerprint is, in fact, just a smudge of someone else's.
My practical fear often outweighs the emotional ones, and it boils down to premature release. I constantly battle the voice that says, "It needs one more edit. That transition isn't quite right. The dialogue is stiff." But there's also the pressure from deadlines, personal promises, or the need to maintain consistency (like my attempts to post twice a day on TikTok). That pressure makes you hit publish when you know, deep down, the story is still in its "B-minus" stage.
The moment the story is public, it's locked forever. You can't un-ring that bell. The fear is knowing that you put out a piece that represents your current skill level, not your best potential skill level. Every typo, every awkward sentence, and every unresolved plot thread now permanently carries your name. When I look back at my older work, I cringe not because the idea was bad, but because I rushed the execution. Sharing something prematurely feels like deliberately presenting yourself at a disadvantage and that is a terrifying sabotage.
