Maybe it’s procrastination but there are just times when I find it so very hard to just START something.  I have this weird almost fear that keeps me from just doing something.

What I have been doing lately, is convincing myself to do one tiny thing, just one, to start a project or whatever.  Just one easy thing.  A small step.  A tiny step.  At work this could mean sending an email to ask for information.  Or maybe just starting to type a report.  I tell myself that if I start it, then I can always stop and come back to finish.  Wanna know what happens? Nine times out of ten, I finish it.  Done.  Crossed off the to do list.  And it feels darn good.

So thing writing thing I want to do.  Yeah, that.  It’s the craziest thing – I can be doing something so unrelated to writing when words pop into my head that sound amazing in a sentence.  This happens when I’m driving, or taking a shower, or grocery shopping, or doing anything when it’s not convenient to actually write things down.  And then I forget, the moment passes.  Or when I do sit down, I can’t gather the momentum to put thoughts down on paper.

I’m beginning to wonder if it is that voice inside my head holding me back.  That very quiet, hard to hear but always there voice telling me all those things that hold me back.

As I’ve said before, I read a LOT of books.  I’m working my way through The Right to Write at the moment.  It’s like the author is inside my head!  All the nay saying things I heard that little voice saying are kicked to the curb.  The author more or less says we are all writers of some sort, just DO IT.  Or something like that.  And then she outlines a series of “exercises” to get over the fears.  Have to say, I am loving that book.

So this week, I started the Morning Pages exercise where you write – longhand – three pages of whatever in the morning.  Yes, my brain is actually functioning at 5:30 AM though I have to admit that I lie back down for a few minutes after I finish.  Last night before I fell asleep, I had this great train of thought and believe it or not I wrote it all out.  What I plan to do is let all those meandering thoughts just sit there on the page for a while and then I’ll go back and read through it.

Finally, I have to admit that I read my horoscope on occasion – more for shits and giggles than for any other reason.  Sometimes it’s way off and sometimes it hits home.  Today’s horoscope (Cancer) was about being afraid of monsters under the bed when we were kids and it ended with this phrase:

“When you look for reasons to believe in something scary, you will find them whether they exist or not.  Keep this in mind as you set off on a new and important venture”.

Perhaps I am just looking for reasons to fail – reasons to make my fears seem real.