Quit Complaining, You're Already Halfway There

Most people yearn to produce some kind of creative work, and most are further along towards their dream than they give themselves credit for. Our doubt exhausts us and that's when we stop trying.

Because I have now published a book, my friends feel safe confessing to me that they, too, have a book, or books and books and books, in them, and can I give them any advice on writing and getting published? I do my best to listen and be humorously severe. Frequently people sigh over what creative things they would do, if only. The goal seems unreachable, the work insurmountable. If I can get them to just start talking about their goal, and what they've done already, it becomes obvious that creative accomplishment is well within their grasp. They just have to perceive it so, and then act as if a 15-minute bit of work on it is a step forward, for today.

Just last night I was talking with a woman friend with a deep, active, creative, meaningful life. She would like to publish a non-fiction book, blending wisdom from her own life and from her work in the mental health field, but she felt discouraged by the apparent labyrinth between her and getting published.

We chatted about it, and after a few minutes, bingo! She has already written 25 one-minute essays for radio, on the topics she wanted to present in a book, building on skills developed in a similar job she had done for a commercial radio station a few years ago.

Nowadays she hosts a weekly free-form music show for the smaller, funkier community radio station, which wouldn't blink at the insertion of some spoken word. Twenty-five essays is six months' worth of material, I told her. She has an established media platform, and an established audience from the earlier radio gig! Fifty-two essays would make a substantial book manuscript. The task of editing, writing the proposal, and marketing are in the future at this point, so there is no need to worry over them.

We both started laughing. All the necessary elements of her "unreachable" creative project are laid out in front of her, and she hadn't even noticed.

If you out there ever get a chance to listen to a friend in this way, take it. We all get so close to our creative work that it takes another pair of eyes to spot all the resources at hand for that work's completion.