I am in holiday at the moment and I woke up this morning thinking that I should work on writing a short story. It’s been years since I said I want to start and do some writing.

What did I do towards this? Well, I enrolled myself in an online class about how to write short stories but then in the middle of it I slowed down, I didn’t allocate enough time for myself to do the exercises in the class and I eventually abandoned it. So clearly I wasn’t ready to put in the work. I found all kind of excuses and questions like this:

– I have no good ideas about short stories, it seems like staring at beautiful sunsets doesn’t do anything for me. Ideas just don’t come to me, I am broken!

– I have only written texts for myself before, there seems to be a lot of rules and tips for writing shorting stories, I feel overwhelmed now. Too many video tutorials, too many classes online, I am completely lost.

– If I manage to write a story, how am I actually going to publish it? What if I get negative feedback? Would that prevent me from continuing to write? (Really….you are so far from this, why are you even thinking about this?)

– English is not my first language, should I go back to a grammar course and study the language again?

Even when I re-read the points I just wrote, I start to feel exhausted. Imagine how is like to have all these thoughts in your head at once, spinning and turning. Of course I gave up.

What was I thinking? That I have to figure out everything from the first ever short story I am writing? That writers that produce short stories for a job just come up with stuff out of thin air and everything is just easy for them?

Let’s be serious, every creative work comes with a cost. Usually the cost is a lot of time and a lot of hard work. Every creative person that I know has been and is constantly keeping up the hard work. Yes, things might pop into their heads sometimes, you could say easily, but that is because they trained their minds to come up with new ideas. They even developed patterns on how to come up with ideas based on events that happen around them. Actually, when they have no ideas about how to write something new, or continue their existing project, they do exactly the same thing as when their heads are full of ideas. They sit at their desk and do the work. They write, or try to write, they stick with it. The work is not always good, sometimes is edited out completely but everything that is good or bad is progress, is something that will be edited later. Even exceptional work needs editing and re-working.

So no, creativity is not something that is cast upon you when you watch a beautiful sunset. You cannot sit there watching the horizon and being sorry for yourself that you are not creative. Wake up the next morning and sit at your desk, ready to put in all the time you have into becoming creative and producing content. Some days will not be rewarding but some days will be productive. Productivity is actually defined by the days with non-significant outcome. If we were productive every day this word would not even exist, it would be an implicit way of living. Creativity is a process that involves a lot of hard work and in the end produces new and exciting outcomes. Is not by any means instant. Is also something that requires trial and failure.

I am going to write short stories when I am ready to put in the work. And when the fear of failure is overpowered by the desire to do something new. Not when my grammar is flawless, not when I come into a lot of money and I am able to quit my day job, not when I watch the most beautiful of the sunsets. More time will not help. More time that I am ready to spend on writing will actually help.

I am writing this blog post today because I have been struggling lately to admit that there are no external reasons that stop me to write short stories, to write blog posts like this or anything that I want to pursue really. All the reasons are internal and the more I take them out of my head and put them into print the more real they will become, the more visible. So hopefully once they are in plain sight I can work through them.

I also hope that this post is useful for anyone out there that is struggling to get started with new projects, whatever they might be. Maybe it resonates with you. Maybe it will make you stop and be honest with yourself about what it is that is actually stopping you. Whatever it is, work through it, use your creativity to overcome it.