Naming each rabbit

So, I’ve been quiet on this blog. And that isn’t a reflection of a really busy frenzy of activity behind the scenes. It reflects a fallow period, with the fields left bare, no seeds, no crops, nothing to report!

I wrote a couple of posts ago about chasing at least three rabbits across the field and not really getting anything finished. I had hoped that writing that blog post would shift things forwards. It didn’t – the lack of momentum of failure was still pressing against me.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down to look at all of the open projects and decide what to do about them. One thing was absolutely clear – having so many book projects, writing ideas and open threads is not serving me well. It means that everything needs doing now, which is impossible. The first step I took to resolve this was to go through the projects I have and set a 12 month forward view of them so that some of them will not have any further attention from me until the end of 2018. That helped to ease some of the pressure that was causing me to freeze into inactivity. I was left with just two writing projects in my sights.

It’s probably a gift that I have too many ideas rather than too few. I certainly couldn’t describe this as writer’s block – that’s not what is happening here. It’s the procrastination of indecision.

Still nothing was moving forwards. The reason? Not knowing which way to go first. I can’t call myself a writer if I am not actually doing any writing. There is simple wisdom in that. It’s less about writing books, completing manuscripts, and much more about actually doing the writing –  a little each day. It then becomes about getting 500 words written each day. If I go longer than that, great – but the modest goal makes it easier to keep to.

Have I achieved it yet? No, I haven’t as I started this post. I’ve set up a daily monitoring process based on Marshall Goldsmith’s Daily Questions process – one of the questions is “Did I write 500 words today?” Since I started the exercise I have been looking at a long line of zeros. Today will be the first day in weeks when I break that silence with this blog post. Five hundred words to get me to the first step of achievement.

Sometimes a blog is a space to share thoughts, to promote ideas and to provoke others to react. And then sometimes, it fulfils the purpose of getting started again. This post has just achieved that. As February approaches I will be blogging progress, and more ideas to get the wheels turning again, to create a momentum that takes me out beyond the starting point and into a regular rhythm that looks like a practise. Small steps on the path to the next books as they emerge in their simple, flawed first drafts. Steady, steady progress and onwards to the light.

Also published on Medium.