MindScribing

I am the first to admit that I have trouble beginning new projects. I’m not sure if I’d call it procrastinating, but I tend to find reasons to put off my work for another day. Is that procrastinating? Oh darn.

The good news is that I now know what is causing this problem. The issue, as you might have guessed, is that I let fear paralyze me.

Fear of what, you ask? Well, as a writer there are many things to fear: failure, humility, rejection, loss of income. Oddly enough none of those are the reason for my writing hang-up. I’m afraid of starting, the simple task of actually putting the first sentence on my paper or on the screen via the keyboard.

Why are the first words so difficult? Here’s where my faulty thinking takes me:

• The beginning of the first paragraph dictates the direction of the entire piece. (If I start off sloppy, the entire piece will be sloppy.)
• I’m afraid I don’t have all the research I need to write a complete and compelling piece. (Better surf the net some more.)
• Nobody wants to hear what I have to say. (This is the blogger inferiority complex Darren Rowse of ProBlogger discussed recently.)
• I will feel more inspired next hour, later tonight, tomorrow, what have you. (What’s going on in the Twitterverse?)

Some of you are wondering where the faulty thinking is…after all, the beginning of a document does set the tone for the entire piece, and we do need to have sufficient research to write. However, if you are a perfectionist like me, you tend to take things to the extreme and are a bit irrational. Okay, at times very irrational.

Regardless of the cause of this fear, I have learned a few things about it, and how to squash it into the ground like a bug:

• Just get started. Write that first sentence – you can always delete it. Take a journalistic lead and write out the most important thought in the first sentence…the rest will flow naturally. (I’ve proven this to myself time and time again.)
• Do your research and stop when you’ve got enough information to write a book – before then is better, unless you are writing a book. You can always look up more information as the piece is being written if you find yourself stuck. (I’ve found the most of the time I have too much information, which can lead to the “where do I begin?” syndrome.)
• Some people don’t care to hear what you have to say, and will never visit your blog. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people interested in you and your writing. If it interests you, it almost always interests someone else – even if it’s just your mother. (I write for myself now, the rest comes as a result of that.)
• Just like waiting for the right time to have a baby, buy a house, or leave your job, there is no right time to start writing. Do it now! The very act of writing brings on the creativity – don’t expect inspiration to come on its own. Create your inspiration. (Nike has it right – Just do it!)

I’ve had to do a lot of looking inside myself to figure out why I stall with the projects I’m given. It’s a hard thing to do – to recognize that there is a problem and then to tackle it. I am more optimistic now that my work will take on new meaning, and I will find more time for getting more done.

Do you have any irrational or rational fears that paralyze your writing? If so, please comment or write a post of your own about it! Just do it!

Photo courtesy of Flickr

My daughter wants to be a writer. Technically, she already is. She wrote her first (3-page) book when she was 6, shortly after our beloved Maya-kitty had five little boy-kitties. She even illustrated the book. From the day she could hold a crayon in her left hand I knew she would be an artist, which is why she left me a bit surprised when she told me last month that she wants to be a writer.

I can’t remember how the topic of “what do you want to be when you’re older” came up, but she promptly argued that art is boring because she only knows how to draw so much, and that she can write about anything she wants. I reminded her that she could also draw anything she wants, so she made herself a compromise. She’s going to write books and then illustrate them.

This same dream hit me when I was 14 and in the phase of wearing black clothes with black Doc Martens while listening to Morrissey and The Cure and writing morose poetry. However, I’m not an artist in the way most people think of artists – I can design and have been told I’m a master with color – but I cannot for the life of me illustrate. I am not sure how I ended up with a “B” in Drawing and “C” in Human Figure Drawing while attending The Academy of Art in San Francisco.

To get back to the story – I didn’t want to write fiction and illustrate my stories. I wanted to write poetry and use my photography skills to illustrate the poem meanings.

I did eventually pass through that goth-like phase, but while my love of poetry and photography did not fade, the realization that I needed to pick a career that would pay my bills hit. Maybe some make money with poetry, but I pretty much gave up on that. Despite keeping the dream of writing for a living deep in the bottom of my heart, I ended up taking an entirely different direction from writing when it came time to go to school and get a job.

Fast forward several years, past a fiance that ended my art school attendance, a few mediocre jobs working for control-freaks, a new baby and then a new marriage (oops), past 2 years of Paralegal Studies that I was currently taking a break from because of another new baby….

It was 2004 and I was a stay at home mom.

Andie was 4; Sophia was just a baby. I took a semester off school because I knew I couldn’t do it with the new baby to watch out after (school was via distance education). Despite having my hands full with the girls, I was bored.

Then I met Lara, a local who loved scrapbooking and knitting, and she gave me the link to her knitting website one day. I had discovered what a blog was.

It wasn’t long before I had my own blog set up, and I quickly found that I was able to utilize both my writing skills and my love of design.

Having a relatively new marriage and two kids and no job, I had a lot of struggles and general bickering to write about. One day, I received a comment from someone named Wendy. She read my insights on life and my dreams of writing and she loved my writing style – she was also a writer (still is!) and wanted someone to help her with some ghostwriting. It wasn’t long until I received my first payment for an article and suddenly, I was a writer.

My daughter wants to be a writer. I peered over her shoulder this afternoon as she opened up Word and typed “The Wishing Well” in a scribbled font, followed by her “written and illustrated by” byline. The first line – “Agatha,” said Mrs. Oliver with a scowl on her face. Miss Snark might have a few cross words about it, and Andie isn’t being paid to type her little story, but I’m loving it.

I love watching a new writer be born into the world of creativity.

And so it begins…for her. How did it begin for you?