If you want to write a book and you’re not doing it, your problem isn’t that you don’t have time.
It’s not that you need more info.
And you definitely don’t need another £49 “how to write a bestseller in a week” template.
Your problem is that you are not permitted to be bored.
Everything around us is designed to suck in our attention and prevent us from thinking too hard about anything.
It’s not your fault; we’ve been sold an empty promise and our creativity is the price.
The promise: if we just stay connected, consume more and more information, spend more and more money on a quick-fix, we’ll achieve the things we want to achieve.
We’ve been told that none of us should ever feel any pain or sorrow (there’s a pill for that) and god forbid that we should ever be bored (there are far too many apps for that) and that Stepford-Wives-happy alllll the time is the key to… something.
We fill every waking moment with moving pictures and noise and clutter, then wonder why we have no time to connect — with our friends, with our family, with ourselves.
And definitely not with our creativity because we’ve been told by generations of governments and school boards that creativity is frivolous, a waste of time, as they slash funding to the arts.
(There’s a vested interest there, by the way, and it’s not yours or your children’s.)
And so, of course you have no time to write. Your time, like mine, is crammed full with genuine life and business stuff, of course — but the GAPS are filled with doomscrolling, with numbing activities, with being too damn tired to do the things that are meaningful to us.
Ignoring the noise is an act of rebellion. (Most of it is not important.)
Doing NOTHING for a few minutes is an act of rebellion. (You do have time.)
Creating the things we want to create is an act of rebellion. (It is essential to our sanity and the growth of humanity.)
So lemme ask you: what do you want to create?
You say you’re thinking of writing a book, but what are you gonna do about it?
How are you gonna create space for it?
May I respectfully suggest: put down the device you’re reading this on, and leave it in a drawer. Go do nothing at all. Open the doors to your brain and let a fresh breeze waft through it.
Decide: I’m going to do this thing.
Then find a way to make it happen.
Step 1 is stepping away from the noise.
Step 2? Just start.
You can do it on your own, for sure… but you haven’t so far.
So try the Kickstart Your Book workshop on Tuesday, July 23 at 4pm UK time.