Getting to it

Isn’t irony funny?

I was telling someone that I really needed to get down to the task of writing more often (a lot more often) because I had SO much I wanted to write.  And the fact that I had so much that I wanted to write about was the thing that was keeping me from doing the writing.  The overwhelmed factor – that feeling that you have so much to do that you don’t know where to begin.  It’s a self-inflicted paralysis of sorts.

So much to write about but I can’t get started because I feel overwhelmed by all that I have to write about….irony at its most absurd.

Steven Pressfield, the author, writes in his wonderful book, “The War of Art”, that we all encounter this block – he calls it Resistance.  This invisible force that keeps us from our work, our task at hand.  It’s internal, yet we externalize it through excuses and justifications.  We allow this Resistance to take from us what we want the most – to get down to it…to take a step forward and get moving along our desired path.

I suspect it’s because we want everything to fall into place….to be struck by inspiration which magically allows everything to flow smoothly and easily.  We don’t like being “forced” to do this or that…to get down to the hard work of focusing and plowing through.  I like to have a clear, complete picture in my head when I’m writing a piece, but yet I forget that the beauty of writing is that it takes on its own shape despite where I try to lead it.  Writing is not about producing the perfect piece; writing is about being open enough to allow the “muse” to come through…to let it be what it will.  Just the act of sitting down to put words on paper swings open the gates of energy and forward momentum.  It can’t be any other way.

I guess what I’m saying to you, and to myself, is to get on with it.  Whatever you have to do – be it write the next great American novel or clean the bathtub, go at it.  You will feel so much better once the task has begun. – BB