Consummate authors scare us. They turn us from rabbits to turtles. Instead of tearing along, enjoying the wind in our hair and the exhilaration of taking great leaps forward, we toddle along heavily, sniffing the air for signs of danger and twitching back into our shell at every instant.
How then can we unleash our inner rabbit, pirate or hard-boiled investigator? And does it even matter if we have a voice?
We all know people who are more worthy than us to write a book. They are our teachers, mentors, friends and colleagues. It’s intimidating to know that these excellent people have chosen – for whatever reason – not to commit their ideas to paper.
Have you ever set aside a whole day, or scheduled a full morning to write, only to find that somehow, the whole time gets wasted? Ouch.
You arrive at the allocated time, but you are sick. You sit down to write a chapter, but instead, you completely restructure your book outline, only to realise that the original one was better. You decide that mornings are your best writing time, but somehow you always have something else to do in the morning. Or you sit staring at your laptop, or page, and sink deep into the ‘I’m not good enough’ mindset.