I’m dis­cov­ering that full time writing is an intensely stressful occu­pa­tion. You get to enjoy every­thing that’s risky about being an entre­pre­neur and every­thing that’s risky about being an artist all at the same time. Screw up on the job as an employee, and you might get a stern talking to and a chance to make things right. Write a lousy book? Fail to pros­e­cute an effec­tive mar­keting cam­paign? Say some­thing really stupid in public? Yeah, you’re pretty much done. Worse is the pos­si­bility that you could do every­thing right, write a dyna­mite novel, be a fas­ci­nating person who’s incred­ibly effec­tive at mar­keting your­self and you *still* might fail, for having missed the zeit­geist, or falling a victim to industry forces over which you have absolutely no con­trol. And your income depends on this, your quality of life.

So, yeah. Stressful.

And what’s the temp­ta­tion when you’re stressed? To reach out for sup­port. You call your friends and whine, and they tell you that every­thing will be all right, and you believe them long enough to get back to work. The Internet is par­tic­u­larly well suited for per­pet­u­ating this phe­nom­enon. I see a lot of writers using social media as a giant vir­tual group therapy ses­sion. Go ahead, tweet or update your Face­book status to say you’re having a rough day. I’ll give you 30 sec­onds before you start get­ting sym­pa­thetic replies.

All to the good. What­ever keeps you on task when you’re fright­ened or tired or tired of being fright­ened or fright­en­ingly tired.

But I’m starting to dis­pense with that. What I’m begin­ning to realize is that the dis­com­fort is peren­nial. All reme­dies are short term. When you choose a life as uncer­tain as this one, it’s the flavor of the air. You don’t live in the ocean and curse the salt water. There’s a reason people work boring day jobs. That secu­rity, that sense of a net under­neath you, is a very valu­able com­modity. People are willing to give up a lot for it.

The key for me, is coming to grips with the fact that there is no remedy. It is much the same as accli­ma­tizing to life in a war zone. Once you accept that nothing can really pro­tect you from indi­rect fire, you do a lot better in the midst of it. You stop run­ning for the bunker or wasting your time chewing off your nails trying to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between blast phases and shrapnel scatter pat­terns. You finally make that cliched but absolutely accu­rate state­ment that “when it’s your time, it’s your time,” and you get about your busi­ness. It doesn’t com­pletely mit­i­gate the stress, but it helps.

Writing is much the same. I spend a lot of my time in a knot of anguish over whether or not my stuff is good enough, or whether it’ll fall on its face even if it *is* good enough. But I don’t think I’m alone in this. I’ll never forget the first time I heard a writer say that he felt like a fraud for being suc­cessful (it was James Patrick Kelly during a public radio inter­view). Since then, I’ve heard it dozens of times from the mouths of dozens of dif­ferent pros. Enough anec­dotes makes for a trend.

This is the new normal, and the only thing I can con­trol is the work I do: how much and how well. I try to accept the stress for what it is, an envi­ron­mental impact, like hot sand to armadillos or cold water to polar bears. I still reach out for sup­port when things get unbear­able, but I do it less and less, leaving my friends to their own devices.

I already know what they’ll say. I know they have faith in me. I know they love me. I know they wish me suc­cess. And I also know they can’t make the world safer or kinder or gen­tler for me. Suc­cess or failure is entirely on my shoul­ders, at least what little sliver of it I can con­trol. So I focus on that.

Because, hey, when it’s your time, it’s your time.