What if

how I use my anxiety to fuel stories

Have you ever woken up at 3am, stared at the ceiling and started fretting over every single possible scenario that may or may not exist when the sun comes up, whether those scenarios involve you or not? Or maybe you’ve scripted every which way a potential conversation could go, days before said conversation. Or perhaps you’ve panicked about heading down a new path simply because you’ve never been there before. If this is you, my creative friends, then this post is for you.

Because while this anxiety can be crippling at times, it can also be your greatest superpower.

Folks with anxiety have the best “what if” capabilities. Of course, anxiety in general is perfectly normal and human. So even if you aren’t buzzing with it from time to time, you can tap into this skill for it’s positive effects also, because anxiety is all about the what if. It’s the spiralling out over that question that can become damaging and prevent us from doing things we might actually want to do! I’ve been in many situations where I had something exciting coming up, something I really wanted to do, and ended up backing out because I let that buzzing pest get the best of me. I let the what if turn into a monster.

But what if…ahem…we used that tendency for brainstorming creative projects instead?

I’m not posing this as a solution to anxiety, only a spin on a symptom that can frequently get the best of us. When I was in theater, my anxiety fueled my performance. It gave me energy on stage like I’ve never really experienced again—and frankly don’t want to. But it showed me when I didn’t let it win, I could use it to my benefit. Weirdly, it allowed me to escape into another character almost completely, and leave myself behind. Anxiety has tremendous imagination behind it—this is why we can spiral in a bad way, picturing and feeling every bad thing that might happen even when we’re not trying to. I’m simplifying, but this aspect of it has made me think about how I can put the same imagination and energy behind something constructive.

A few of my most favorite ideas for books have come out of this brainstorming. One such project is about to get some new life because of its intriguing “what if” question, and in the meantime, I keep thinking: How can I recreate this? How can I come up with another project that has just as much energy and mystery behind it? How did I ever dream up that idea?? Will I ever be able to do it again? What if I can’t?

Now see, there I go.

That’s where I must stop myself and redirect. What if I can?

• What if you could relive ten minutes of every day before you went to sleep?

• What if our collective mood controlled the weather?

• What if the electromagnetic field stopped working?

• What if it was post-end of the world and we were not allowed to have children anymore?

• What if all the rivers dried up?

• What if we could travel in time but it changed our age every time?

What if, what if, what if…

See? This can be fun!

The best part of the what if game is that it can—and should—be used when you’re actually in the trenches of writing, also. Not with such large, sweeping, conceptual questions, but with small decisions your characters have to make. Ask what if she did this or what if she did that? Ask it every time there is a choice to be made. Perhaps write out both, or all options, and see which one feels the best. This is part of the fun in the discovery of writing— allowing your characters (and yourself) to spiral in all directions in a safe, creative way—until you reach the right conclusion.

It’s scary doing that in real life, but in writing, music, painting, even gardening, that kind of exploration, asking questions and taking risks, and seeing what feels right, is what makes art art.