Just Start

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon Gretchen Rubin and her Happiness project. I signed up for her "21 Days to a stronger Relationship" newsletter and am currently reading her book "Happiness at home". I have a lot more to say about her books and being Happy-could write a post or two-but this post comes out of something I read this evening on her blog.

She recently had a Q&A with author/journalist Bridget Schulte, who wrote the book "Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time." When asked what advice she'd give her 18 year old self, Schulte had this to say:

"One of the most powerful strategies for changing behavior, changing the way we think and use time was this: Just Start.  Sometimes we overthink things. And sometimes, the brilliant Udaya Patnaik of the design firm, Jump Associates, told me, it’s easier to act ourselves into a new way of thinking, than it is to think ourselves into a new way of acting."

This really stood out to me. As someone who has wanted to write a book for years, I still have yet to complete a single chapter. I'm ashamed to say it. I've set goals for myself, I've outlined half a book on notecards, and yet nothing. I feel like I do Coach T a disservice by saying I even took one of her webinars and STILL didn't follow through!

I'm not sure why I'm holding myself back. Am I scared the book will suck? not get published? I know I'd be my biggest critic. I'm a voracious reader, and half the stuff I read I know I could do better. (not to sound conceited) I've had amazing ideas for book concepts over the years, and not followed through. Over the weekend I read this YA series that had a similar concept to something I came up with years ago. It wasn't written exactly how I would have gone about it, but that fact that it is published, and a trilogy nonetheless, is so irksome to me. 

So here I go. I'm done holding back, done being scared, done putting it off. My new goal for the writing challenge is to work on my book for at least 30 minutes a day. Hopefully some days it will be more, but I am making the promise to myself to Just Start. 

I AM an Author, and Authors write.