The Power of Creativity \(Book 1\): Learning How to Build Lasting Habits, Face Your Fears and Change Your Life pdfdrive com

I’m Afraid of Starting
Starting is tough.
When  I  was  in  my  early  twenties,  I  told  people  I  wanted  to  write  a  book.
What I didn’t tell them about was my problem.
For years, I couldn’t start writing. I’d open up my word processor and then
switch to my internet browser for research. I’d answer my email or see if there
was  something  I  wanted  to  buy  on  Amazon.  Afterwards,  I’d  check  my  bank
balance and feel depressed.
It  went  on  like  this  until  I  disappeared  down  a  rabbit  hole  of  meaningless
web searches and doing anything but my most important work.
I  wasn’t  writing  anything.  I  believed  I  wasn’t  ready  to  write,  and  I  needed
some anointed mentor to pull me aside and say, “Bryan, now is your time.”
Jealous  of  the  success  of  others  and  sick  of  my  lack  of  progress,  I  joined  a
fiction  and  nonfiction  writing  workshop  in  Dublin.  On  the  second  evening,  the
instructor said every student had to submit a short story.
I was afraid of starting, but I was even more afraid of being found out.
I  hadn’t  written  a  short  story  in  years,  but  I  didn’t  want  the  class  or  the
instructor to know.

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A writer in a writing class who doesn’t write, is a fraud.
I went home, and I wrote. I wrote that night and the night after that. I wrote
until  I  finished  my  first  short  story.  It  was  terrible  –  the  instructor  told  me  this
later – but that didn’t matter.
I had taken the first step towards facing my fear of starting.