Skip to main content

Getting Started

 


Writing can change the world, but it is not easy. The hardest part of writing (for me) is getting started. So many times, I have tried to get motivated to write and the mojo just isn’t flowing. Or, I will have an idea, but be uncertain what to do with it. Do I proceed down path A, or path B, or path C? Or is there another even better path that I haven’t considered yet? There is a certain amount of fear of wasting my time, writing 10,000 words that wind up not going anywhere. Writer’s block is not always about difficulty in coming up with ideas. Sometimes it is about what to do with those ideas.

The thing is, once I get started, I usually can keep the fingers flying. It is just getting over that initial hurdle that’s the problem. I know this about myself. You would think that would make it easy to push through the uncertainty blockage, and just launch into my next project. But no. Knowing about it does not make it easier.

It’s not just me. Many writers have this problem or some variant of it. And it is not just writers. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, stops people from trying anything new. Growth or advancement requires change, change in yourself, change in your world view, change in your comfortable life. We all want growth, either physical, spiritual, professional, or intellectual growth. We all instinctively know that we can’t attain that without change. But change is hard. Change is risky. Change is the unknown. It might be as uncomfortable as walking down the street naked while singing at the top of your lungs. Getting out of your comfort zone is what it takes to get anywhere in life. But you have to accept it. You can’t change the world without changing your world.

Aversion to change is part of the human makeup. Most of us don’t like change. We like to be comfortable. Comfort: that is the root of the problem. Wanting to stay comfortable in our own routine is what keeps us from advancing, keeps us stuck. Some people are less averse to change than others and those people are doers. Doers don’t necessarily like change, but they have found a way to push through their resistance.

I have basically two creative outlets in my life: Writing and theater. Stepping out onto a stage for the first time in front of hundreds of people is daunting. Your desire to achieve something has to overcome your fear of all the ways it could go wrong. And there are so many ways it can go wrong. If you dwell on them, you would never go on stage.

Writing is more private than stepping on stage. If you write into a dead end, no one has to know. But what you have written is still your baby. If it is bad, you have to let it go, and that can be demoralizing. It can make you question yourself. “Maybe I am no good at this writing thing.” It is a confidence killer. Confidence is what makes you get on stage. It is what makes you push through a writing blockage. Believing that you really are good at this, you can do this, makes the barriers fall.

Go out and change the world. You can do it.


(My science fiction novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon and other online sources).

Star Liner


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Second Wind

  You have heard about athletes getting their second wind? It is not that they feel better, that they are warmed up and ready to run more easily. It is not psychological (at least, not all psychological). No. There is an actual physiological truth to a second wind. It all has to do with respiration. When I say respiration, I am not talking about breathing. Respiration is a biochemical process that happens at the cellular level. It is how the cell gets energy. There are lots of chemical processes that are constantly going on in each cell, and those processes require energy. Without a constant feed of energy, the cell will die. The more demands there are on a cell, the more energy it needs. For example, every one of your muscle cells need more energy when you are running.   In fact, you won’t be able to run if the cells don’t have sufficient energy for it. The energy currency of the cell is a molecule called ATP. You may have heard that sugar is how our bodies get energy, wh...
1 comment
Read more

The Outsider

  I am reading The Outsider by Stephen King. The first 150 pages or so I found disturbing. Not for the reason you might think. It is not scary, not creepy in a traditional horror way, but disturbing in a tragic way. The first hundred to 150 pages is tragedy on top of tragedy. The most disturbing thing to me (it is disturbing to me anytime I encounter it in any story) is a false accusation. A man is falsely accused and may well be convicted of a horrific crime. That kind of thing disturbs my soul. It makes the whole world seem wrong. I have always been disturbed by stories with that kind of thing. And why not? It happens in real life too. That makes it all the more horrific. In the Jim Crow South, all you had to do was make an accusation against a black man to set the lynch mob in action. No need to bother with a trial. But even if there was a trial, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, innocent or not. We see Vladimir Putin inventing charges against people and they get locked up...
1 comment
Read more

A Child of the . . .

  What was it like to grow up as a child in the 90s? How about the 1940’s? Thinking about a child growing up in each different decade, conjures up images in my mind. But that is all they are: images. I was a child in the 1960’s. I can tell you what it felt like to be growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, but what it felt like to me is not what the history books remember. History will tell you the 60’s was about the Viet Nam War, civil rights, and the space race. The 70’s was Disco and Watergate. I remember being aware of all of those things, but to me this era was about finding time to play with my friends, something I probably share with a child of any decade. It was about navigating the social intricacies of school.   It was about the Beatles, Three Dog Night, The Moody Blues, The Animals, Jefferson Airplane. It was Bullwinkle, the Wonderful World of Color, and Ed Sullivan. There are things that a kid pays attention to that the grown-ups don’t. Then there are things the adults ...
Post a Comment
Read more