, now available for preorder, and coming in just two weeks!She's talking about what scares her after the jump!
I’m a big Pinterest user. You know, the kind of person who pins thousands of crafty projects I’ll never finish and recipes that have potential to make me look like Martha Stewart when I am more likely to eat a tomato for dinner. Obviously, that means I pin quotes: hokey ones, funny ones, poignant ones. You name it. There’s one, in particular, that I like to remind myself of when I’m terrified.
“Everything you’ve ever wanted lies on the other side of fear.”
On a good day, it’s a swift kick in the tirkus to take that leap toward whatever goal I’m working for. On a bad one, it should say, “More fear lies on the other side of fear.”
So, what am I afraid of, exactly?
Snakes (earthworms count!).
Losing people I love (it’s intensified only in the last few years).
Dying in a fire (nursing school and burn units can do that to you).
Free fall rides (but bring on the skydiving and roller coasters, because that makes sense!).
But at the end of the day, my biggest fear, the one that paralyzes me and (I told you I like quotes, right?) in the paraphrased words of Dr. Cox on Scrubs, “makes me clench up so tight I could eat a piece of coal and crap out a diamond” is…failure.
Failure’s a weird thing. I believe mistakes are necessary to learn. And mistakes don’t equal failure. After all, it’s not like I look back at my crimped hair in seventh grade and think every hairstyle I’ve ever had since then has been a failure because of one mistake. Things happen. You learn. You grow.
To me, since I was little, failure is falling short—not finishing a project, not doing as well as I’d like, or not measuring up to expectations. It’s not about doing the wrong thing. Let’s do a Cliffnotes version of the last few years, shall we? I majored in sciences despite my parents urging me to pursue writing because I didn’t have the courage to take the chance. After college, I worked with kids to gain some pediatric experience—then I took off for Boston for a semester of post-college nursing school. I hated it. I came home, hit rock bottom, got a Masters at my previous alma mater, finally wrote my book, worked for a year at a job I was lukewarm about while I got an agent, landed a publishing deal, quit said job to pursue writing full time for a year, and am debuting in May.
When you read it like that, it looks like a decent list—a couple of wrong turns but ultimately, a good life. You aren’t wrong. However, in my mind, I’d fallen short so many times, many of my own doing. I hadn’t just fallen short—I’d stopped short. That is, until I got the guts to write my story and everything finally fell into place.
Everyone who has published a book has been a debut at some point. There’s consolation in that. But everyone that I’ve spoken to also remembers the sheer terror of putting your words out there. This time, falling short feels like falling out of the penthouse.
As Harvey Specter said on my favorite show, Suits, “Deep down they think it's only a matter of time before they fail. They would rather fall from the third floor than the penthouse.”
Besides being a dashingly good-looking high-powered attorney, Harvey was right about one thing: failure feels inevitable and it’s easier to stop yourself from climbing too high so you can save yourself from heartbreak. Boston felt like a failure because I didn’t finish the program. I ended up not liking teaching as much as I thought. Getting an agent took me eight months, but during a bleak time when I thought I wouldn’t get one, it seemed I had fallen short again. Now, with the debut in May, the fear of failure is like a ticking clock: it’s only a matter of time before it happens—with sales, with fans, or something as simple as a spelling error we didn’t catch through the editing process…and like Harvey said, it’s much easier to fall from the third floor than build a castle in the sky and fall out of the penthouse. I’ve finally achieved a lifelong dream by taking the risk to put my words out there. This is my penthouse.
You know how I mentioned that fear of snakes? Well, the terror multiplies when you run from it—I took a walk last year with my best friend on a bike path behind my house. We saw a snake from about twenty feet away, lounging on the path in the sun. We turned around immediately and I will remember that panicked stroll back for the rest of my life. The entire time I was running away from arguably one of my biggest terrors, I thought it was growing behind me. When I see that walk in my mind’s eye, I see the snake growing bigger and bigger in size as it gives chase. The fact is, if I’d just continued walking, I probably would have scared it and I could have kept going.
Now, I’m not trying to be all Augustus Waters and be metaphorical here. But when John Green wrote those words, “It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing,” he was onto something. Because the only way to face a fear is to go through it and take away its power over you.
So, now, as I close in on my release date and the haunting nightmare of failure, I am going to face it and go in headfirst. I’m going to step over the snake next time. I’m going to prove to myself that it won’t grow if I face it. Because what I want, success, is on the other side of facing that fear. This time, I’ll remember not to give the fear any power over me. I won’t stop short because the fall is higher. This is my penthouse. And I’ll decide how to fall.
~*~
Annika Sharma was born in India and moved to the United States (Pennsylvania!) when she was a baby. Annika was a daydreamer from day one, always coming up with stories and games of pretend that seemed real. She was a serious journal-writer from fifth grade to college and wrote dramatic scenes for stories often, inspired by soap operas she watched in summers off from school.Eventually, when the time for college came around, Annika's parents encouraged her to pursue journalism. Convinced she couldn't make a living from writing, Annika disagreed. After five years, two degrees, two minors, working with children, being a dancer teacher, and creating a two-and-a-half page resume in college that had interests so all-over-the-place that even she couldn't make sense of it, Annika finally decided her parents were right. Writing was where her heart belonged all along.
In the month before graduate school, the idea Annika had in her mind for years finally poured out in the form of the novel, The Rearranged Life. Annika began editing in earnest after she finished her Master's degree in Early Childhood Special Education, landing Stacey Donaghy of Donaghy Literary Group as an agent. Three months later, she had a book deal with Curiosity Quills.
In her spare time, Annika loves spending time with her family and friends, often indulging in the three S's: Starbucks, shopping and superhero movies. As a chocolate lover and general all-around vegetarian foodie, Annika also adores cooking.
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