Stop with the excuses.

Today I decided I’m going to be a writer.  Yes, I’ve said before that one of my dreams is to be a writer (and get paid for it), but today I decided that I am indeed going to BE a writer and I’m going to be a writer now.  I’m not going to quit my jobs to be a writer (at least not anytime soon), but I am going to write.

You might be wondering what made me decide today that I’m going to be a writer now.  Well, today I got to meet one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott (I can’t really say that she is my absolute favorite author because it’s a three-way tie for my favorite author).  I’ve written about Anne here on my blog before, but as a refresher Anne Lamott is an incredible person and writer.  I love Anne’s writing because she writes about the beautiful as well as the messy aspects of faith and life and she does it with humor and brutal honesty.

There were a few pieces of advice that Anne shared about writing that really helped me decide to be a writer:

There will never be the perfect time to start writing.  I can wait until I have a well-paying full-time job, I can wait until I get settled with a husband and a family, I can wait until I have an incredible life experience to write about, I can wait until I’m retired, or I can wait until ________________ happens in my life.  The point is I can wait and wait for the perfect time, but once X happens there will be another reason why things aren’t perfect for me to write.  So, as they say, there’s no time like the present.

We each need to give ourselves permission to write.  I have really struggled with finding the time and reason to write and I think it’s largely because I don’t give myself permission to write.   I doubt that I am a good writer (I’m certainly not the best writer ever, but I do have some skill).  I rationalize that there are far more important and urgent things to do than write (and many times there are).  I tell myself that I don’t have anything important enough to write about.  I tell myself that no one will want to read what I write (at least no one besides my friends and family).  The only person I need to get permission from to write is myself.  Anne suggested that getting permission from ourselves is like calling up a really good friend.  Sometimes we may have to call every morning to get that permission, but what kind of friend wouldn’t give permission to do something we love and long to do?

Don’t be afraid to write bad first drafts.  Anne said she only writes one kind of first drafts: bad ones.  The blank page often paralyzes me and I’m usually afraid to write anything down without it being in perfect, creative sentences.  But if Anne Lamott writes bad first drafts and her writing ends up like it does in her books, maybe I too can overcome imperfect first drafts.  (However, this piece of empowering advice also means that second and third and forth… drafts will be necessary.)

Write what you would like to find.  Someone in the audience asked Anne if she would ever write a book about meditation.  She said “no” because there are already so many good books out there on meditation.  Anne said her best books are those books that offered something that no other books out there offered.  I haven’t quite isolated exactly what it is that I want to contribute to the written world, but I have a few things in mind. 

Stop with the excuses.  Just stop.  This pretty well sums up all of Anne's advice, but encompasses anything else that might stop me from writing.

So here’s what I’m going to do: Write every day.  Even if it’s only for 30 seconds.

Thanks Anne for the encouragement and advice.