So you check the email one more time, or consult your planner or glance at the newspaper. Anything but confront the page in the notebook or the document on the laptop where you will actually have to go to work.
Why don’t you plunge in?
Why do you hesitate?
You say you want to write something–something wonderful you have in mind–and yet you put the launch on hold. Why?
Fear, typically.
Fear creates a chasm between wish and reality, between the daydreamy wannabe and the lunch-pail writer busy putting sentences together like a bricklayer making a wall.
Fear of failing to execute as you dream of executing.
Fear of not measuring up to someone else’s expectations.
Fear of being alone with all your half-formed and unconvincing thoughts.
Fear of not making it (whatever “it” is).
Fear of difficult work.
Fear of being thought a fool.
Fear of silence.
Fear of the feeling of fear itself.
There’s only one thing to do with the monster under the bed. And no, it’s not looking underneath to prove that it’s not really there.
The only thing to do about the monster is to ignore it.
In other words, to plunge right in. To walk straight across the chasm, through the open space, looking straight ahead and not down.
In brief: to write.
One sentence at a time.
Just one sentence.
Write it.
Now.
And feel the courage and inspiration surge through you…
So what’s your fear?
