If you say that putting yourself out there doesn’t scare you at all, I’m sorry, but you’re lying. Whether you’re asking someone on a date, applying for a job, or submitting drafts to a journal, the possibility of rejection is always imminent and always terrifying.

Unfortunately, putting yourself out there is a necessity for emerging writers. If you want to be published, you have to send your work to journals. This means you have to send your very intimate drafts out to complete strangers. These are the drafts you have slaved over for months, maybe even years. The drafts you have hated and then loved and then hated and then loved again. The drafts that if you find one more thing wrong with, you swear you’ll delete the whole thing altogether.

The very thought of sending these drafts to someone who doesn’t know the work you’ve put into them is horrifying. This fear is amplified by the fact that this person’s job is to judge their value impartially. Yet, it’s a requirement of the career you’ve chosen. You’re not Emily Dickenson; you can’t just hoard your drafts until they’re discovered after your death. The modern writing world is competitive and always advancing so there is no time to waste waiting around. You have to submit to journals, contests, and publications as soon as possible.

Well, if you weren’t scared before, you’re probably scared now. Sorry, I don’t mean to scare you. But as a struggling young writer, still in university, trying to get ahead, I’m scared too. So, I wanted to share what helps motivate me to put myself out there despite my fears.

My advice is simple: do it. Life is all about doing things that scare you. Think about where you’d be if you never took off your training wheels, never jumped into the deep end, or never spoke to that person who is now your best friend. Submitting your work is just the same. You have to do it, and once you do, you’ll be glad that you did.

While you’re submitting it, do it with the knowledge that you’ll likely get rejected more than a few times before it works out. It would be amazing if you could submit whatever and get published on your first try, but that is just not realistic. After all, you still wobbled on your bicycle before you could ride effortlessly. It might sound counter-intuitive but once you get over the initial hurdle of your first rejection, it gets easier. Once you’ve already put yourself out there, you may as well do it again. Eventually, with persistence and adaptability, you’ll get published and you’ll feel great about it because you know how hard you worked to accomplish it.

You’ll find that the best part of putting yourself out there isn’t actually the act of getting published, but it’s the satisfaction of not letting fear rule your life.