Writing and the delusion of self-doubt

I never thought I, of all people, would write a book.

Don’t get me wrong. I have a creative side to me. I acted when I was younger and still do, whenever someone gives me the opportunity.

I played trumpet as a kid, and I can play the radio with the best of them.

But writing a book?

I started this book two years ago. I came out of the gate strong. I wrote roughly twelve chapters before we moved from Texas to Tennessee and I stopped.

I used every excuse under the sun not to pick it back up. We moved; the hard drive is in storage. We are too busy trying to find a house, then starting a new job.

And last, but not least, every writer’s crutch… “Writer’s Block.”

One night a really good friend, who is more like family, asked how the book was coming?

I leaned on that crutch hard. “Man, I’m stuck. I just don’t know where to go with it. This writer’s block is killing me.”

Then my friend did something I wish he had done a year earlier. He gave me a dose of reality and a swift kick in the tail.

“Bro, as long as I have known you, you have let nothing stop you from doing what you wanted. A disability? No problem. You go to Iraq and Afghanistan for fifteen years of government and military contracts. A blown-out spine? sure, it’s logical to go rock climbing or repealing. Writer’s block is a B.S. excuse. If you want to finish it, you will sit down and finish it.”

It was the dose of point blank, call your bluff, “you’re being lazy,” I needed.

And that very next day, I sat down and wrote twelve-thousand words. I worked on the book every day until I thought it was ready to submit.

Don’t give up. The process can be hard, self-doubting and brutal. Keep writing. Every word counts. Be tougher than the doubt and kick that books tail.