Go Where You’re Scared: Permission to be new again (#399)

When painter Alex Katz was asked, late in a career most artists would envy, if he still worries about new work failing, he laughed and said, “I want to go where I’m scared.”

It’s a line that lands like a dare: if the fear is pointing somewhere, maybe that’s exactly where we should head.

Katz’s sentiment isn’t bravado. He’s describing a compass.

Fear, in Katz’s usage, isn’t panic or recklessness; it’s the mild vertigo you feel on the edge of a longer view.

In another conversation Katz put it this way:

You must be a little scared of what you’re doing, otherwise you just repeat yourself, each time a little duller.

The point of mastery isn’t to stop risking; it’s to risk more intelligently.

Why the scary place matters

• Fear marks the boundary of growth.

  
  

  • Comfort is where skill plateaus.

    
    

  • Anxiety, properly dosed, is where the brain pays attention again.

• Originality lives just past the obvious.

  
  

  • When we work only where we’re competent, we polish.

    
    

  • When we walk past competence, we invent.

• Integrity is tested at the edges.

  
  

  • Our principles are easiest at small stakes.

    
    

  • The scary place forces us to align values with action.

What scared looks like

• Choosing a problem you might not solve.

  
  

  • The research question with no tidy precedent; the painting you haven’t figured out how to see yet; the book chapter that refuses your usual voice.

• Letting audiences change the work.

  
  

  • Reading a new children’s story aloud before it feels finished; inviting critique that could redirect your draft.

• Saying no to safe applause.

  
  

  • Declining the derivative project, even if it would “do well,” to leave room for the work that may fail but could matter.

Leadership, teaching, and the arts: the shared edge

• Creative practice, scholarship, and leadership all harden into routine if we don’t periodically re-enter the unknown.

  
  

• The best leaders step into conversations that could change culture.

  
  

• The best teachers redesign a beloved lesson because students have changed.

  
  

• The best artists refuse to repaint their last good painting.

  
  

  Katz’s rule travels well: go where you’re scared, and take your craft with you.

Permission to be new again

There’s a myth that confidence precedes courage.

In fact, courage manufactures confidence retroactively.

You make the brushstroke, or the argument, or the call, and only then does the floor reappear under your feet.

So the invitation is simple, and a little electric:

• Pick one thing today that makes your pulse climb.

  
  

• Name the risk, set the guardrails, and move toward it.

  
  

• If the voice in your head hisses, this might not work, thank it for the map. That’s the way!

Go where you’re scared.

Then bring back something the rest of us haven’t seen yet.

 Rick's Commentary

I want to go where I’m scared lands squarely in children's picture-book land, because children are the most honest audience you’ll ever face.

The risk isn’t shock value; it’s the courage to be simple, clear, and true, with almost nothing to hide behind.

So here are some ways for a picture book writer to go where they are scared:

• Write up, not down. Respect the child’s intelligence. Use plain words for big ideas; swap condescension for clarity.

  
  

• Touch big feelings lightly. Loneliness, jealousy, grief, courage should be named in age-true ways that offer a safe harbor by the last page.

  
  

• Risk radical economy. 300–600 words forces choices. Let white space and the page turn carry meaning you don’t spell out.

  
  

• Let pictures do new work. Don’t narrate what the art can show. Design spreads where image and text disagree a little, and that friction creates discovery.

  
  

• Prototype out loud. Read to real children early. Watch bodies, not faces.

  
  

• Honor the real world. If you’re writing about animals and their habitats, get the details right. Authenticity is a form of kindness.

  
  

• Chase sound. Cadence, refrains, and page-turn verbs make the book performable. Your sentences should be fun to say five times in a row.

  
  

• Write for the re-reader. Layer a wink for the adult, a pattern for the child, and a surprise that appears on the tenth read.

  
  

• Trim the sermon; keep the spine. Theme should be felt in action, not spoken from a pulpit.

  
  

• Revise like a brave person. Kill the darling spread, swap the viewpoint, cut the clever line that slows the heart of the story.

  
  

That’s the scary place. To go there is to bring back a story a child will ask for again.

Strangely enough, these suggestions apply directly to many of life's challenges!

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