Forget waiting around for inspiration, just start already!

I started this blog over 6 months ago as a way to experience how to leverage social media, build a platform, and to practice writing. About 3 months ago I signed up for a book writing class, and established a schedule to write. The class started about a month ago. Each morning I get up at 5:00 (okay, this morning I got up at 5:34) and head to my home office and write until about 7:00.

I'm not starting until I'm inspired

Some mornings I work on my book writing assignments, write a scene for the book, or write a blog. Some mornings I stare blankly at my monitor, waiting for the words to travel from my caffeine deprived head to my fingertips. For this blog, I maintain a list of topics that I add to when an idea hits me. Which is about 15 times a day. My topic list is about 3 pages long, and you'd think I could just wake up, take the first topic, and start writing. But life isn't that easy. You'd think I could scan the list, and have one topic grab me and inspire me to write. This happens often, and when it does, I go with it. Some of the best blogs in terms of traffic are spawned from this form of topic selection.

It's the mornings where I wake up, stare at the list, troll Facebook, push stuff around my desk, and sip my coffee that require the most work. This morning is one of those days. I'd rather sit and wait for the perfect topic to just pop out of my subconscious, forcing my fingers to tap away at the keyboard. Then I realize that today is probably the typical day for me. In fact, it's probably the typical day for most of us. We don't all start the day as a bubbling fountain of energy, with inspiration, and a choir of angels singing cover songs to light the way for us.

Instead, we likely get up, feel our way through the kitchen assembling our breakfast, maybe putting our own needs aside to serve someone else - like kids or cats, and then go with the rhythm of the day. We leave the house around the same time, go to the same job, do the same stuff, and then come home for the routine, and then go back to sleep. This routine carries on day after day, week after week, and year after year. Maybe we have ideas about how we can change all this, and do something different, yet we wait for the right time, the right place, and the right circumstances to act on what we really want to do.

My mornings are like this on many days. I think about falling back into the rhythm, leaving the list of topics to find its own way in life, let the list of ideas become stale, let the blog drop, or don't bother working on the book. it's easier to admit that inspiration is fickle, it may have moved down the street, compelling someone else to chase their dreams. I'm not worth the time.

And then I see these thoughts for what they are, and I see the lack of inspiration for writing in its full depth. I realize that inspiration is highly over rated. Our best inspiration comes from just getting started. As soon as we start doing something we love to do, inspiration will jump out from its hiding place, and propel us along. We don't need to wait, we only just need to start. We are more likely to finish if we start. Not starting is probably to blame for much of failure.

So this morning I just started. I wasn't sure where the words would take me, but after the first sentence was written, the rest just followed. Another blog is complete, and I can move on to the rest of my day - peeling and packing vegetables for our daily lunches for the week, watering our gardens, and getting ready for the rest of the day. Today's blog is complete because I started it. This is how much of life works.

What haven't you started? Where does your inspiration hide? Do you have any tricks for getting inspiration to join you on your quests?

If you like this blog, please share it with your friends using the cool little social media buttons below. I added a Google +1 button, and am trying to figure out how to add Facebook like and comment functionality, so please keep an eye out for this in future blogs. 

The middle class author is emerging

I love to read Penelope's blog, until I don't anymore. Then a few months later, I read her blog again and love to read it. And this cycle repeats.

Penelope's Guide to Blogging | Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist

When I started blogging in November, I was just playing with social media, getting a better understanding of how they all relate to each other. Suddenly, my traffic doubled, and I started having fun.

I haven't picked a main theme yet, but do have topics I enjoy writing about. I'd write more about office politics, and management dysfunctions, but it might sound too real to people I work with who may read this blog. So for now, I pick a topic that interests me, and just dump my words on the paper.

Writing my blogs have been great for helping me get my thoughts down in a coherent format quickly, and I think my writing overall has improved. I have two books kicking around in my head, where they've been waiting for the right time to come out. A few weeks ago, I started writing one of them. I won't provide any teasers, but my honey loves me, and if it sucked she'd have told me when I read her the first chapter. But she said it was real good, so I will keep writing.

I know a literary agent, and he once said that in order for a book to be successful, it must be about dogs, self help, weight loss, sex, exercise, or business. We once sat on a sailboat during a sailboat race without wind, and tried to change the "or" to "and", coming up with a book that was about dogs, self help, weight loss, sex, exercise, and business. It was very hard to mold these topics into a story.

The other book bouncing around in my head is a business book, outlining how to perform specific processes in project management. I can probably get it on paper in a few weeks of part time work, and self publish. But one successful author of a business book (Peter Taylor) I corresponded with, provided me an outline he used to get a book deal, and invited me to write my idea in his format to submit to a publisher. He also said not to write the book until I had a publishing deal. I haven't done this yet. Indecision is the key to flexibility. 

Penelope would disagree with his wanting to use a publisher. Her New rules for self publishing blog post outlines the cold hard facts. Publishers help very few people get their books published. Self publishing is a perfectly viable path for writers.

Think of what MySpace and iTunes did for musicians. They created a marketplace for a middle class of musicians to gather a following, and sell their music. I really believe that self publishing, and digital distribution will do the same for writers. People who can write engaging and/or useful stuff, will be able to make a living writing. 

What do you think? Is self publishing a viable option? If I author a book, would you be interested in buying it? You'd probably want to know what it's about first, and I understand this. I promise it will be good.

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