#223: Just start
I sat waiting expectantly for my Editor friend, Parul, to turn up.
She was going to tell me whether my book idea was a good one or not.
Nursing my rocket fuel of a Black Americano in a Putney coffee shop early one Wednesday morning alongside a hubbub of commuters.
Whilst dogs and people pattered, bicycles clunked and the aroma of coffee filled the shop, I was in my own world, playing out how this conversation was about to go.
Parul is an Editor, she used to work in publishing. She’ll tell me if my book idea is a good one, right?
I could see two possibilities for the conversation and I was playing them out in my head with expert precision.
Option A (preferred) she’d smile ecstatically and be blown away by the ingenuity of my idea. We’d move into a high intensity improvising type of conversation that would get other people in the coffee shop looking at us but we wouldn’t care, “yes and you could do this. Yes and you could write that!”. I’d leave feeling energised with a couple of email introductions to friends in the industry who would guarantee this seedling of a book would be seen by millions.
Option B (mildly catastrophic). I’d be met with one of those long pitched intakes of breath that tradesmen give you. “Oooh, I’m not sure about that one, have you read [insert cool, better writer than me, relevant author’s name] latest book? It won all the awards last year.” Essentially, give up now, you big loser.
The conversation didn’t go as I planned.
After Parul arrived, we had a general catch up about life and London before my arms began to flail passionately whilst speaking about my book; Jack the Lad, Bridget Jones’s Diary for Men.
I spoke about the need for the book, how few are writing for men in a way that is real and true. How we need to shine a light on male culture, how men need new role models and a new narrative. My arms were speeding up like a windmill helpfully fanning notes of coffee across the shop.
My arms that had now officially become wind turbines slowed and I took my first inhale for 3-5 minutes.
“When are you going to start then?”
I nearly spat my coffee out.
I shuffled nervously in my seat, suddenly feeling like I was at school and I’d not done my homework.
My tail retreating between my legs, I mumbled, gaze down, about how I was nervous to get started and I was looking for some sort of reassurance or validation.
“It means nothing unless you write it”
Boom.
Just like that the blistering reality of what it means to create something new went off like an earthquake inside me, a natural disaster that has occurred before.
For ten years I’ve stony-faced told would-be startup founders that their idea is worthless unless they build something.
I’ve stood on my pedestal and delivered sermons on just getting started, on how there’s no excuses not to build. How ideas are cheap, execution is everything.
Parul, ever so kindly offered me that mirror.
How easily we hide when we’re scared. How quick we are to procrastinate, to avoid, to doubt.
How shiny and perfect an idea is when it’s just a thought. How comforting it is to mould and play with it in our imagination. To foresee it’s great success or nightmare of it’s demise.
How easy it is to keep dressing it up in all those different clothes. How easy it is to dream, and not to do.
I’d been scared on many levels to begin creating something completely new, something I’d never tried before, something that only in my wildest dreams did I believe I could muster. Something I had no idea if I were capable of.
I’d been presented with my own medicine. My own favourite creative mantra.
Just start.
Just start. The two letter quote stuck on my wall.
The two letters that I whisper to myself when I come to write a newsletter, a blog post, create a company, brand or community.
The two letters that evaded me when I had the kernel of an idea that felt frightening and made me feel vulnerable.
The hardest part is getting started. That’s true for the first line of a book. The first email about a new company. The first brush stroke on the canvas or the first step of a run.
The hardest part is getting started.
There’s no way around it either. No productivity hack. No 5am cold shower to magic your way there. No way to outsource it. No amount of research, preparation or procrastination will help.
When it comes to sharing a part of yourself with the world to create something new, a piece of art intimately shared between you and someone else in whatever form you choose.
The only thing you can do.
Just start.
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Writing
Who am I?
Writer, founder, husband, always tanned.
Wannabe poet, imposter, taboo buster.
Thinker, philosopher, not a drinker
Joker, chancer, bad dancer.
shoulder chipped Stokie
champagne hippie
Asks questions,
the big ones
best ones.
Always
asking
Who
am
I?