“They’re just as scared of you as you are of them.”

I was about to teach my first class as a paid instructor. I’d taught before on a volunteer basis, but suddenly everything was different. People were ponying up money and I was supposed to deliver content. And answer any questions. And make it engaging. And manage the whole room of personalities to maintain a safe space. And not forget everything I knew about the topic for the day.

I was terrified.

Then my mentor dropped the above gem on me about a day before the first talk was scheduled. After a pause, he said, “You know, since you’re the instructor, they’re maybe even more scared of you than you are of them.”

Oh. OH. I hadn’t thought of that. I’d pictured a cruel and uncaring audience, one that would sit and judge and snark and belittle if I made any tiny misstep. Ancient Rome, meet education. To the arena! Fight!

My mentor reminded me that I was going to be talking to people. Real people. With fears and hangups and obstacles and joys and hopes and dreams of their own.

Sound familiar?

I bring this up because of the importance of empathy. (And because a recent light brush with hate for the gatekeepers of the profession bugged me. Crushing dreams is something I’ve been accused of on occasion for gatekeeping my daytime profession, and it bugs me when it happens. Overreact and personalize, much?) Because we’re all talking to people, with hopes and dreams and fears and hangups of their own.

There’s no demons.

There’s no monsters.

There’s people. And people are imperfect and passionate and unpredictable. Good people, and bad people. Generally more of the former than the latter.

It bears mentioning.

I’m working on a new manuscript.

It’s not the first time I’ve done this.

But it is the first time I’ve really concentrated on it. The rule used to be that I had to put down some words every night. I wrote flash fiction (and that was good for developing setup, conflict, resolution skills), or maybe I messed around with another project. As long as words got made, the goal was met.

Now I’ve set myself to making words in response to a request from my agent. Every day. Make the words. Make them. I’d done it before for other kinds of projects. I could do it now.

Vague sense of dissatisfaction, though. I made a draft. I linked events. Things happened. Some of it was easy, some of it was hard. Writing’s hard. Everybody says so. Hard work. I’m not afraid of that.

I also meant to get the playlist put together for the story. Busy times. No playlist. Disjointed thoughts of “Oh! I should put that song on the playlist!” as I encountered new music and old. But no playlist materialized.

And I didn’t feel the story. Patience, grasshopper, I told myself. Let it come to you. It will.

Then I made the playlist. Then I understood something about “my process”.

I need to line out the events. They make logical sense. They have suspense and tension and flow from character choices. I think so, anyways. Hopefully someone agrees with me.They are the skeleton, the outline, the bones of the story.

But I need the playlist too – which makes sense since I spend so much time with music. That’s where the heart of the story comes from. That’s where I get not the sequence of events but the impact.

Now I know. And now I can quit worrying about not feeling the story, and with any luck, this is a process that can be (and will be) repeated in future.

Patience, grasshopper.