The cure for “I’m not a good writer.”
The plain and simple truth:
If you are not sitting in front of the computer or with pen and paper writing, there is only one thing stopping you:
FEAR.
From my experience, and from the writing coaches and ghost writers I’ve interviewed, fear is the number one reason why solopreneurs don’t write.
No, you say? Are these some of the reasons why you’re not writing?
I have NO time to write.
I’m not a good writer.
I don’t know where to start.
I don’t have anything important to say.
I’m confused about what to write.
I don’t understand how to get published.
And on and on, right? Well, those are all excuses and justifications rooted in fear.
So here is the cure-all for fear, and what’s really behind the statement, “I’m not a good writer.”
WRITE.
Yes, I’m asking you to do something you’ve got lots of resistance around, justification and reasons why you can’t write that you believe are valid and real for you. Here’s the deal. You’ve fooled yourself into believing that you don’t have anything of value to share. That you’re letting the “stories” in your head—your unproductive, negative beliefs around your worthiness—stop you from producing something that could change your life and the lives of others.
The fear is real, I get it. Even though I’m a six-time published author and I love writing, writing comes naturally to me (as you can see evidence of here in PappyClub), but I also have my fears. YES. STILL. After a lifetime of writing, I still face my own belief barriers that keep me stuck and not moving forward with my own writing projects.
The Cure
The cure is to just start writing. Write every day, even if it’s for five minutes in the morning when you first get up. Start training those writing muscles. You’ll be amazed at how your brain works on your writing projects at night while you sleep and you’ll start seeing signs of writing coming to you more easily.
Make it easy to write every day. Find a time that works for you, even if it’s a legal pad or journal by your bedside and you get up and before your feet hit the floor, you write for five minutes. One trick is to write letters to your loved one—your spouse, partner, parent, sister, BFF—to help ease the mental blocks around “formal writing.” In those letters are your thoughts that you want to capture and express that could turn into something bigger. It’s a mindset shift that gets the words out more easily.
Increase your writing time. Every day, increase how much you write. Little by little, the key is to create a new habit. You’ll start to look forward to writing because it’s a creative outlet we all need.
Don’t judge, don’t edit. Write freely without judgement or editing what you wrote. Just do a “brain dump” and get it out on paper/computer. If you truly are a poor writer from the standpoint of grammar, formatting, etc., remember editors are everywhere and you can get one to help make your words make sense.
Celebrate your milestones. When I work on a book, I don’t let myself get up from the computer until I’ve written a set amount of words, typically it’s about three thousand. I give myself a reward each day I accomplish that goal.
Don’t try to figure it out, just write. It’s okay if you aren’t organized or have an outline about what you’re writing. It’s important to get what’s in your head and heart out onto the paper/computer. You won’t know what the end product is going to be until it hits you. And believe me, it will hit you.
Don’t get stuck in constant output. Make a decision at some point along the journey of what you’re going to do with your writing.
Get help. Editors are aplenty as well as book coaches and ghost writers. Once things start gelling, you can have conversations and explore the next steps in your writing journey and what you’ll turn your writing into. Could be a book, could be a series of videos, could be a training course, could be a TEDx talk. You never know.
The key is to acknowledge the excuses and fears and still write. Say to yourself when you are resisting writing, “I’m just going to sit down and write a few lines. I have some thoughts about xyz and want to get it down on paper/computer. It doesn’t mean anything more than that.” And then write.🍀
