Who shall it be?

Pick someone who in your mind is anxious to read your work.  Someone who you can mentally count on to act interested in what you’re doing.

But in the end, you really have to write for the person mentioned in the next sentence.

You.

Sure, be true to yourself and all fits here.  But in this day and age of an excess of printed words, you may find yourself lost in a sea of expression.  That’s okay, if the writing is for you then nothing else matters.

And then a funny thing happens.   Your writing becomes the truest voice you have…and that’s what the rest of us want to hear anyway.

Now go fire it and write for an audience of one.

J

Revving it up for 20 or 30 seconds is all it takes.  Thinking, stewing, analyzing and putting it off will only result in misery.  The pain of putting it off is immensely greater than the pain of doing it.

Think about the people who just did the Alcatraz swim with no wetsuit.  You think they didn’t feel fear, agony, regret?  Of course, but you know what they did anyway?

Jumped in the water and started swimming.

An hour later they’re on the beach smiling, endorphins rushing, fear missing from their mindset.

Now, go jump in the water.

J

They’re part of the landscape of life.  You do things, you screw up.  Picasso, Einstein and Sinatra all made huge errors on their way…did it stop them?  Nope, they just made course corrections.

It’s not a mistake if you learn from it and adapt, it’s a bump in the road you navigated around.  We all make ’em, the difference is in how you treat it.

Now go fire it up, make it messy at first, fix it and show us what you’re capable of.

J

Our anticipation of the drudgery, consequences, dilemmas that will come with whatever it is we’re putting off are at times overwhelming to the point where we won’t do a thing.  It’s just easier to go to a movie or lay on the beach than to attempt tackling our project.

But think about it.  The anticipation of the turmoil is actually worse than the turmoil, if there is even turmoil at all.  You know this, you’ve gone through it before but it bears repeating.

Just starting is the easiest way – everything else: research, time saving techniques you look up online, self imposed deadlines that get pushed forward – these are all pain.  Starting becomes painless so soon that you don’t even know you’re doing something you didn’t want to do.

Now, go fire it up.  Just start, the rest is easy.

J

Hard to extrapolate from that.  We need to be told this from time to time, it’s such an easy trap to fall into.  Your self talk drags you down into some hellish pit of self loathing, failed dreams, lack of will power…etc.  But that’s not you, it’s just one of those negative voices that we’re all told to ignore or head off, but when it’s your own voice inside somehow we give it more weight.

Don’t.

Give the weight to your actions.  Those are who you are: what you do makes you.

Wait, you’re not doing anything?

Now you have the perfect reason.  Make yourself who you want to be by doing the things the person you want to be would do.

Now go fire it up.

J