“Just imagine how much you’d get done if you stopped actively sabotaging your own work.”
~ Seth Godin
As I return to thinking about creative focus, I couldn’t help but feel the sunrise this morning was showing me the way …. Focus V !!!
At the end of Thursday’s post, you may have heard some whispers of self-doubt, which may be keeping me from getting started and committing to my next one big creative project …
As I read through the chapter on building a rock solid creative routine, something that Seth Godin said hit me like a ton of bricks, each time that I’ve read it, for I recognized something of myself in his words …
Seth was asked: Why do we work hard in the short term, but still fail to achieve our big-picture goals?
His answer: Fear.
We self-sabotage ourselves because the alternative is to put ourselves out into the world as someone who knows what we are doing. And we are afraid if we do that, we’ll be seen as a fraud.
Putting ourselves out in the world, standing confidently behind our work, opens us up to criticism. And it means that we’ve just now signed up for a lifetime of having to know what we are doing.
It’s much easier to whine and sabotage ourselves. This is what we hide from – the noise in our head that says we are not good enough. That says it is not perfect. That says it could be better.
Joseph Finder writes: “It’s completely logical why so many people talk about writing a book (or a screenplay) and so few actually do it. It’s risky. When your novel exists only as a theoretical concept, it’s the best novel ever written. Put it down on paper and you risk realizing that you can’t do it. Or that you’re not good at it. Or that you really don’t enjoy doing it. You can’t fail if you don’t try, right? The most successful writers aren’t the most talented. They’re the most stubborn.”
I recall something another creative professional shared with me last year in regards to a previous post on self doubt. He said: “Victoria, there is not a good writer I know who has not been assailed by self-doubt. Similarly, alot of crappy writers I’ve met are brimming with confidence. The trick is to turn fear and doubt into your allies, which means shifting your stance about yourself. If Tolstoy worried whether he had anything worthwhile to say, should you be any different? Don’t picture capturing a large readership, but think of connecting with one reader at a time, and the magic and alchemy that can result from that encounter. You do have the Gift. I recognize it. Now, as that wise woman (me) suggested, be willing to give your talent away.”
There’s a Russian proverb that says “The first pancake is always a lump.” Our first draft is likely to be a piece of crap — and that’s okay. Because as they say in Hollywood: “We can revise it. We can fix it in post-production.”
Repeat after me: Just write it …
