#015 - Crossing the Rubicon … the writers’ diseases!

There are of course many writers' diseases you should endeavor to inoculate yourself against. The result of catching one may simply cost you an irritating but short loss of time which means your manuscript will take longer to produce than originally planned. In the very worst case, the writer will give up altogether. There is one thing to remember in relation to anything that invades or attacks your plan, and in any way stops you writing. No matter who you blame, in the final count, it will only be you inflicting this curse upon yourself.

Self Doubt.

If you are unfortunate enough to catch the common winter virus of self doubt, unless you find a way of attacking it immediately, then your writing plan will go 'out of the window', your time plan will dissolve into nothingness and eventually, you will stop writing completely. So, if you don't actually believe in yourself anymore, should anyone really care? If you doubt you have the ability to write ... having gone through all the pain and time consuming research to put your writing project together, then things will not get better on their own. Self doubt is generated by a lack of confidence in your ability to put words on a page in a reasonable order to the extent they make sense to the reader. Self doubt can also be spawned by others around you constantly providing you with advice you really don't need.

Writers' Block.

Writers' block is now recognized as the second stage of self doubt. If you do nothing about the 'self doubt' virus, you will definitely move on to the 'writer's block' stage. There is much more to be found on the Internet about on writers block but in effect if you doubt your preparation, if you doubt the sincerity of your ability to put words down on a page, if you doubt you will ever have the time to finish your manuscript ... then the result will be failure.

Ditching The Plan.

The point of desperation you will undoubtedly face on not being able to 'un-block' yourself will be to ditch the plan. You will blame 'the plan' for all of your woes and the evil voice inside your head will be pushing you to take another path ... in other words ... 'ditch the plan!' Once you do that, you are a rudderless ship in a stormy ocean. Unfortunately, as you alone act as captain and crew, you have no-one to hand your responsibilities to ...so then, when you have reached this desperate point, you simply have to resort to the dreaded excuse of 'not enough time!'

Not Enough Time.

So here you are. All your planning and exhaustive sketching has now ended up in the toilet because you 'simply don't have the time'. The excuse is a winner of course with family, friends, children, mothers, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives who have all been robbed of your precious time whilst you have been 'head down - backside in the air' constructing the necessary planning disciplines and framework for your writing project. The winter virus has turned into a major disease ... and one for which there is no cure. Not one single person will be around you who can catch it, leaving you with no one you can discuss the situation with and therefore ... life goes on. The only person disappointed with you ... is now you.!