Overcoming Obstacles and Fear

So That You CAN Write Your Book©

By Rita Emmett
Rita's Resource Center

Guest Author @ SlantedK
Follow @slantedk

Have you wanted to write a book forever but just cannot get started? Is it possible that fear is holding you back? (Fear of failure? Fear of success? Sounds crazy but you actually might experience BOTH those fears at the same time).

Fear is too broad a subject to tackle in this article. If you suspect that fear is holding you back, get a copy of my book, The Procrastinator’s Handbook, from the library
(or buy it if you prefer).

Read Chapter 4, “The Fears That Stop You Cold.”
It will help. Sometimes you just have to do something scared. If you push through the fear, and set the timer, you’ll find the fear melting away eventually.

Fears, Doubts & Friends

A few final words about fear… Sometimes, people who love you (and also those who don’t) want to keep you from getting your heart broken or your dreams dashed (or maybe from succeeding), so they give you all kinds of advice why you shouldn’t write your book or even have any hopes of getting it published, or ever selling a copy or of anyone ever reading it. Every time someone gave me this kind of advice, I would get a knot in my stomach and had to fight fear all over again.

When you combine this bad advice with all the people grabbing at you shouting “Fix my life” or “Do my stuff. It’s more important than your silly dreams” or “Take care of me first, THEN you”, you’ll feel yourself sabotaged and undermined. And you’ll start to second-guess yourself and wonder if you really should ever think of writing a book.

Sometimes the solution instead of a “To-do List” is a “Do-Not-Do-List”. You might need to make up a list reminding you that a certain relative is very manipulative and that you don’t always have to stop your life to take care of her. Or maybe a reminder that you sometimes go overboard in doing a volunteer job, and take a one hour task and expand it beyond what anyone every expected you to do --- where it takes up days or weeks of your time.
Everyone would have different examples of things they should remember not to do, but here are a few ideas:

Do Not Do List

To help you stop doing what you DON’T need to do.
<Tweet this.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

DO NOT let writing a whole book scare you. Just think of one chapter or one section at a time.
DO NOT believe you have to work to the point of exhaustion to be considered a capable person
DO NOT try to please everybody you know
DO NOT spend your time doing everybody else’s priorities
DO NOT say “yes” to every request
DO NOT think that being busy is a standard of success
DO NOT consider it necessary to take care of every single person you know in order to be liked
DO NOT believe that you never have time for your priorities or to write your book
DO NOT let fear of failure or fear of success keep you from writing your book
DO NOT try to live up to the expectations of everyone in the world (including you)
DO NOT strive to be so independent you never need (or are able) to ask for help from others
DO NOT spend time on busy work that’s not important to you

"When others aren’t sabotaging our writing goals,

we are doing it to ourselves."

Rita
Tweet Quote

Every time you find yourself “bogged down” and can’t find time to work on your book and you KNOW it’s not possible to devote a whole day or evening to it, grab a kitchen timer, set it for one hour and devote one hour to writing your dream-come-true book.
Not only is it possible to give yourself one hour every so often, it’s energizing. Remember times in the past that you’ve put off something forever, then finally completed it? Remember how relieved and joyful you felt? How the energy bubbled up in you? Once you start writing, you might be stumped at first. Things will go slowly. You’ll stumble along, but then a rhythm sets in and your enthusiasm for your project will give you energy beyond belief. The words will flow.
You'll feel great and you deserve it.
Now get going.

If you could tap the mind of a Successful, Speaker and Author, would ya?kickstartcart.com/app/?af=1476620
— David M Karder (@slantedk) July 21, 2012

Rita Emmett is a "Recovering Procrastinator", a Professional Speaker, and best-selling author of The Procrastinator’s Handbook; and The Clutter-Busting Handbook.
For more articles on this subject, go to www.RitaEmmett.com
To subscribe to her free monthly “Anticrastination Tip Sheet” with quick short tips & ideas to help break the procrastination habit, go to the first page of her website www.RitaEmmett.com

~*~