The power of excuses

It took a really long time for me to work up the courage to decide I had enough material to cover a whole book.

If you think about it, books are long.  It takes many dedicated hours to get through even a moderate sized one.  If it's good those hours don't really seem like anything.  If the book is... not so good... every hour reading it seems like a day.  You feel like you've been reading it forever, and not in a good way.  You just want to get through it and move on to a new, more exciting book.

I don't abandon books easily.  It has to really just tweak me in a certain way for me to completely give up on it.  Most times I will suffer through, knowing the author made a valiant effort and then I can't even really bring myself to make a poor review on Goodreads.  I feel their pain and I wouldn't want someone else to do that to me when I get there.  There will, of course, be those out there that don't like my book and I'm sure I will agonize over that, but let's cross that bridge when we get there.

I had an idea for a book, was it good?  I don't know.  It sounded really awesome to me!  But when its your little fantasy that you've been daydreaming about for years it better be pretty good to you.

The question was, was it good enough that other people would want to read it too?  Not only do I want them to read it, I don't want the vast majority of people out there to keep checking their collective watches while slowly but surely making their way through my agonizingly boring book.

It has to be good, I told myself, or its not worth doing at all.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist in a lot of ways.  It's not house cleaning or car maintenance, but when I really put my mind to doing something I want to be the best!

Because of this mind set I felt like I had to have everything perfect before I could actually begin to write.

The office has to be cleaned up
I need a new desk chair
I need a bulletin board
I need a printer
I have to finish the book I'm currently reading
I have to finish the Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies book
I need word processing software

Ok maybe the last one was slightly more necessary than the others.  I thought I was going to need all of this stuff before I could even begin writing.  I'm sure if you ask my husband this list is not complete.

I kept getting a lot of questions from friends and family about how my writing was going.  I always had something to say about it.

"Well I can start writing as soon as the planets align, that baseball pitcher throws that perfect game and my son goes to bed on time, all on the same night!"

One day when I actually heard myself telling someone that I couldn't start writing because I was waiting for Jon to hang a bulletin board in the office I realized I was really just making excuses.  I still felt like I couldn't do it.

I was having a hard time pulling the trigger because I wasn't even sure the gun would fire.  Here I am standing at the range, knowing I want to shoot a gun but I'm not sure if the bullets I have on me are going to work.

My real problem wasn't the list of tasks I needed to accomplish before I could begin writing.  My problem was that I was still doubting myself.

It was that day that I pulled the note cards off the bookshelf and started to work on getting them in order and figure out where my holes were.

I am still full of doubt, that hasn't changed.  I decided that instead of constantly questioning whether or not I could do this, I should just start and see if I could.

It was a good decision and I'm glad I made it.  Time will tell if I'm actually good at this, but at least then I will know for sure.  I don't want to wake up 50 years from now still wondering if I could have done it and never knowing.

I might be late to the party, but at least I'm showing my face!