Learning to Write Past the Doubt
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked, “When are you going to write your book?” I can’t tell you how many people encourage me to chase that dream — without realizing it really is my dream. Every time, I give the same sheepish answer: “Yeah, I know. I need to. I will when I have more time.” And then I tuck the idea away again, too scared to admit how much it matters to me.
Because the truth is: I want to write a book. I’ve always wanted to. But what if I can’t? What if I’ve spent my whole life as a reader and lover of words only to find out I don’t know how to write a book? What if I sit down to start and freeze? What if I can’t figure out how to go from page one to page two hundred?
To be a published author has been one of my biggest dreams — but also one of my biggest fears. It feels too big, too impossible. And so, I’ve let it slide to the back burner while I focused on work, marriage, family, and everything else. But it never really left me.
Writing has always been part of who I am. As a kid, I filled floppy disks with stories. In middle school and high school, I poured my angst into dramatic poetry. In college, I majored in English, and creative writing classes sparked the fire in me all over again. I even wrote a short story called Cloud Season that I was proud of — one I thought I’d expand into a novel someday. I never did. Because expanding is the part that scares me most. How do you turn four pages into four hundred? I know I have the creativity, the love of language, the imagination. But do I have the endurance?
Still, the dream doesn’t go away. I love writing too much — shaping sentences, finding the rhythm, reading them aloud until they feel just right. That love has kept me blogging for nearly five years, and yet I’ve never made the leap into something longer. Maybe because I’ve been too busy worrying instead of just writing.
But today, the fear stops. Today, I start. I don’t know yet what story I’ll tell — maybe fiction, maybe memoir, maybe something in between — but I’ll finally put words on the page. I’ll finally stop treating this dream like it’s too big or too far away. It’s time to stop waiting for the “right moment” and create it myself.
So today is the day. No more waiting. No more burying the dream. I will begin.
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