Pushing myself into that first step

Part of the excitement that is writing, reading, and overall, storytelling, is the discovery of a new story.  When you discover a new story within yourself that you want to share with the world, the excitement is probably comparable to a child on Christmas Eve, awaiting that next morning.  You cannot wait to see it on paper, to see it finished, complete, sitting before you in freshly printed form, and even more, in published form, sitting eagerly on a Border's or Barnes & Noble bookshelf.  However, putting it on paper is a bit different.

You wish you could just open up your brain, pull it out, already finished, and there you have it.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.  I'm sorry, Sylar, that's not reality.  The hard realization is that, excited as you may be to write it all down, you have to do exactly that: write it ALL down.  Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this way, but that is nerve-wracking and scary in some ways.  I can't explain it beyond that.

In the beginning, when we first get that lightning strike of an idea, we may rush to our computers, notebooks, or whatever, and write eagerly and quickly, everything that is in our brains before it leaks out.  And if you never did, well, you learned why you just had to.  Evidently, brain leakages are common.

So, you get that initial outline and brainstorming out onto paper, and then what do you do?  You sit back, relax, pat yourself on the back for taking that first step, go to the kitchen, make yourself a nice snack and go on with life, forgetting about the life you were supposed to be giving your book.  Or, more accurately, pretending to forget about it.  And why?  Well, because it's hard, that's why.

Not everyone's an author, much less, a successful, professional, "sits and writes all day," author.  Even Franz Kafka worked at an insurance company throughout his life because he could not afford to be a full time writer!  So the discipline to keep at it can be difficult to come by at times.

But today, I took that second step.  That step into the future of my novel.  Instead of waking up and watching four more episodes of V (which I am still tempted to do after this), I woke up, had some food, and found myself excited to work after looking over this blog again. 

So I worked.

I put in four solid hours of story building and found myself farther into the details and complexity of the story than I was yesterday, which fuels me even more.  And that's four hours more than I did yesterday, and four hours more than the day before or the day before that.  You get the picture.

For many, it may be that first step that is the most difficult to conquer.  For me, it's the subsequent steps that are the hardest.

Just keep going.  Researchers say (and no, I don't know which ones, but I've heard this before) that it takes around 6 weeks to make or break a habit.  So the first 6 weeks will be a struggle.  But we're going to keep at it, aren't we?

And don't you dare say no.