Hi, everybody, it’s Ginger Moran, PhD, and I am here today to continue my conversation about ways to get our writing unstuck and to make forward progress with our creativity.
I’m talking about a series of things that get in the way of reading our books, and today I’m really going to drill down on one of the ones that I specialize in. Many of my clients share the same fear. The way that I talk about it here is, “Help! Somebody else wrote my book!
It’s very easy to look on Amazon and see that somebody else wrote a book on the same topic, they may have very similar characters or ideas, and you think, “Oh my gosh, they wrote it so much better.”
This is just one of the many, many ways that comparisonitis shows up. (And you can see that I’m working on dealing with my perfectionism because I let that typo just stay in there.)
I want to talk about some of the ways that shows up.
My book isn’t as good as somebody else’s.
Somebody has written my story better.
Somebody’s going to steal my story.
I’m not as good a writer as somebody else.
These are all regular, ordinary, normal fears for those of us who are creative.
What we’re talking about in this series is how to move from these places where we don’t want to be, where we’re frustrated, we’re writing something we know is not quite good, or we keep writing the same thing over and over again. We want to move into flow by raising our confidence and clearing our vision.
What is at the heart of dealing with this is that everybody is original. You have your own story to tell. Ingrid Bergman says, “Be yourself. The world worships an original.”
Although every story probably has been told and has been told differently, the way that you’re telling it is totally your own. So just go with that. Go with your original story. Know that no matter how it comes out, it will be different, It will be yours.
What you really want to do to create a framework to help you get past those doubts. The way to get through is to have a plan for your book. Blueprint it: plan it. Build it: actually get the writing done. And then throw a big old block party to celebrate doing it and inviting all your neighbors. That’s your like-minded people to come and enjoy your book with you.
And if you’d like to talk about your book, I would love to hear from you: http://calendly.com/ginger-writer/15min
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