Greetings dear ones – Happy Monday. I am here with exciting news. Not the news you were likely expecting about the location of our next tour, but a different kind of adventure for sure, more of an inner journey.
Let’s just cut to the chase. Friends, I’m writing a book.
It is terrifying to type that and commit publicly to something so audacious. But it’s true and I am claiming it and owning it. I want to write a book and I am choosing to believe that I have something of value to share with the world.
Why now?
COVID triggered a midlife unraveling for me (thanks for that awesome term, Brene). Remember me writing about that back in August? I’ve had several months now with lots of space in my life and very few obligations. It was so very uncomfortable at first. So much so that I established rigid structures just to help me cope (remember this?). Turns out that forcing myself to sit down and “be creative†each morning taught me something—that simply showing up each day can be enough to get one over significant hurdles. I had heard that before, just never really experienced it in practice.
So what happened exactly?
Well, every day at 7:30 AM I sat down at my desk. Initially I wrote blog posts because that was the most comfortable. Eventually I tried painting and became so intrigued by it that I found myself selecting it most days as my creative practice of choice. If I chose painting for the day, my self-imposed requirement was that there must be paint on at least 1 piece of paper before I could be done. Funny how hard it was to actually get that damn paint from the tube to the paper!
So every day I showed up and every day my overly active inner critic told me what an absolute waste of time and resources this painting stuff was. Once the paint was on the paper, he would lecture me about how sh*tty my creation was and remind me that THIS WAS WHY we had abandoned that whole artist dream back at 18. “You are a thinker, not a creative!†he’d shout.
And yet I kept showing up.
Sit down. Put paint on paper. Silence the critic. Rinse. Repeat.
I did it enough times and the oddest thing started happening—I began to enjoy myself! So much so that I even started looking forward to my painting time where I’d produce today’s version of sh*tty art! It became my favorite part of the day. And once the joy started overriding the fear and I let go of the outcome, I surprisingly began to produce things that I liked. #shocker
Fast forward a few weeks. A series of synchronistic events played out that reminded me of the inkling I had to write a book. My experience with painting made me consider that *maybe, just maybe* I could do the same thing with writing. All I had to do was commit to showing up and putting words on paper. And that, friends, is what I’ve been doing for the last 13 days since I formally committed to this. Drip by drip, I am putting down my story. I don’t have firm book idea, a formula for how to lay it out or any idea how publishing happens but I am trusting in the process and staying laser-focused on the most elemental thing: getting words on paper. It seems to be working. I have 6000 words already and am writing 6 out of 7 days a week. Crazy.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you more about the amazing resource I’ve found that will help me get my book from start to finish. Thanks to each and every one of you who’ve followed Novakistan over the years, left encouraging comments and even flat-out told me I should write a book. It gave me the courage to think I could attempt this. Please celebrate with me as I usher in this new chapter of life – the chapter where I own my place in the world as a Writer.
