Even though I love to write, there are some things I dread doing as a writer. Sometimes it’s hard to come up with blog posts. Writing stuff for my job isn’t always the same thrill-a-minute adventure as writing my own stories. But sometimes, I even dread writing my stories.

The biggest thing I dread writing are battle scenes. For some reason, I find it equally hard to write a big epic battle with armies as I do to write a sword fight or sparring match between two people. My stories are never bloodbaths or fight-fests, but since I write mostly high fantasy, there’s got to be at least a good battle scene or two.

In the fantasy trilogy that I’ve been working on for some time now, I’m currently almost finished with a major rewrite of book one. I’m almost done with the book (yay!) but that means that I’ve come to the point of the big climactic battle (sigh). Revising the battle scenes isn’t much easier than it was writing them the first time.

Epic fantasy battle look great on a screen, and they look pretty good in my head; but getting that into words on the page? That scares me. I write the scenes with much grumbling and trepidation, asking myself why I do this to myself. Because I love high fantasy, that’s why, and I always wind up telling stories that need a big battle.

So, enter a new genre. While I’m slogging through this fantasy rewrite (and fussing over the stalled book two, which I’ve paused because I’m at the battle scenes in that book, too), I decided to start another project. Because I’m a glutton for punishment I thought it would be fun. This project is something totally new for me – historical fiction.

This new story is set in the Golden Age of Hollywood, so I was delighted as I was doing my outline and realized that I have no battle scenes to write. What a freeing feeling! I thought I’d have no challenges with this story because the climax does not involve sword fights or goblin armies hurling magic spells. But there is something about this story that does intimidate me – I’m writing about something real.

Fantasy, for me, is easy (except for the battles). I can basically do whatever I want, and I’m the expert because I made it up. But historical fiction? Now I’m writing about something that other people know way more about than I do. And there are some people still alive today who lived through this time period. I’m writing about a real place, real events, and one of my point of view characters was a real person. I’d (almost) rather write a sword fight.

So why do I keep on writing all this stuff that I dread to write? Because I’m a storyteller. Maybe this is part of the “work” part of writing, the part that makes it not fun. But I know that if I push through my fear of writing a battle scene or my fear of portraying a real person in a work of fiction, I’ll come out a stronger writer for it.

Please share with me – is there any part of writing or storytelling that scares you?