Fear of success...

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So a documentary I finished about 18 months ago, and I've just learned it's going to screen at a fairly prestigious film festival in Washington DC. And I'm scared to death.

DC is a big area for docs. Possibly the biggest. And some of those producers might be there. I'm afraid they won't like it. I haven't watched the film for a while, to be fresh, and when I watched it today to do some revisions, I'm struck by a thousand things I'd have done differently. I feel like a different person now, and the film feels to me almost childlike, compared to where I feel I am at now.

And what if no one shows up? My film is being screened alone because it's a feature, and I'm afraid I'm gonna travel all these hundreds of miles to see my film screened in an empty theatre.

And my parents are coming too. I wasn't sure I could afford to make the trip so they're helping out and making it a kind of short spring break trip. Yet the other day I was actually fishing for an excuse to call the trip off. I'm so scared of going and finding out this small success has only led to an even bigger failure.

And then there's the fear that they do like it. That someone does want me in some capacity for their company, and I wind up being a total disappointment, and getting fired like I did from my previous production job.

I'm so afraid this success is a fluke, and it's all a setup for greater humiliation and defeat, and the revelation that I'm just no damn good.

can we see it?

Of course you are a different person now than you were. That's how it's supposed to work. And your past work will never measure up to your current expectations. It's like that for ALL artists; they just don't talk about it. If you're growing as an artist, and you look back, you're always going to see work that doesn't impress you - that's why you stopped producing that art. So take this feeling as proof of your growth.

There is nothing you can do about how your work is going to be received. The story is written, the song is sung, the game of chess is in end game. Panicking about it won't do anybody any good. Distract yourself and don't hang undue value on the trip. Enjoy the trip. Watch some films. Whatever you do, don't start writing disaster scenarios for yourself. Push comes to shove, get yourself a beret (sp?) and muse to yourself that nobody understood the points you were making. In any case, if nobody shows, that'd be a failure of the marketing of your film, not your film, right? And when I saw Disney's Tron, I didn't see a single person leave in disgust, and I doubt your film could be as bad as Tron.

I recommend an inexpensive book entitled: Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It did wonders for me. It addresses these very concerns, how they're shared by artists of all traditions, and how to confront them effectively.

Interesting that you come back to your work with some time away from it and see a lot of flaws in it. I find when I've written something and I come back to it later, so many things that need changing are obvious to me, things that I couldn't see when I was immersed in it.

Man I hope it goes well for you and you can allay some of your fear. Do you have someone you can talk to about your worries? That can help a lot and provide some perspective, sometimes we get locked in our heads and just go around and around.