BRANDON KELLER.NET

I am really good at finding things to do other than writing.  I have spent the past two days updating my website, making graphics, thinking of a Newsletter template, and admiring how cool some of it looks.  But I haven’t written a single word for the book.  The first book in a series no less!  

I have done all this to shame myself into writing.  To me if I “put it out there” that I’m going to give this writing dream of mine a shot and I don’t actually put in the work, then whenever I see that website, cover prototype, or wallpaper for my computer that I made with the cover art (yeah, that’s how good I am at procrastinating) it will shame me into writing.  That’s the thought process anyway.

Truth is I’m scared to start writing that book.  I know what the story is, where I want it to go, all that stuff.  But I don’t know if it’s any good.  I know that shouldn’t matter and I should just write to be writing for myself.  Do the thing you have always wanted to do – that is enough.  But everyone wants their stuff to be good if not great, right?  

I was watching a video a friend of mine posted to their YouTube channel this week and she touched on this too.  She’s an artist who does all sorts of amazing drawings, paintings, projects, etc.  And she’s fantastic!  But she still feels that desire to make whatever she is making “perfect”.  That elusive goal all of us artistic types aspire to and doubt our ability to achieve at every chance we get.  Like Julia Roberts said in “Pretty Woman” – the bad stuff is easier to believe.

So this is me.  Procrastinating in a somewhat more productive way.  At least I can say that today I wrote something that wasn’t an email or TEAMS chat.  I need to do this.  I need to exercise my writing muscles.  I need to write something – anything, if not daily then at least weekly.  A blog post here, a page or two in Scrivener, anything so long as it’s creative writing and not text messages about dinner and if the water bill got paid or not.

And I’m not even going to satiate my desire to hit that “Grammarly” icon that is staring me down, underlining what I have written so far in disgust at my grammar and poor writing style.   If I ever want to get better I need to write in my voice the way I want to write – grammatical errors and all.  FOR NOW . . . the polishing will come, I assure you.