Before I get started today, I want to push FREE STUFF onto you. OK not really free stuff, it's a raffle and also a copter and you maybe get a prize. The rafflecopter giveaway of an ebook copy of Virtual Wars: Initialization ends 11/22! Godzilla told me he will stomp on those of you who resist! At least that's what I think that roar meant.
Princess Leia once said that Obi-Wan Kenobi was our only hope. I like to think there is a little Kenobi in us all singing Uptown Funk. No matter what you do or what your dreams are there is hope that you can reach them. It takes determination and hard work.
You CAN
Tell this to yourself this over and over again. There are going to be many people who say that you can't. Don't be one of them! If I had a nickel for every time someone told me I couldn't write a novel then I would have a vault filled with nickels to swim in like Scrooge McDuck! Friends and family alike have told me that I can't do the things that I have done. Use it to fuel the fire. Build the fire bigger and hotter until it is large enough for astronauts to see it from space, then sing "Smooooke on the water, FIRE IN THE SKY!"
Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the size of the project I am faced with I ask myself, "What is stopping you from succeeding?" All too often the only answer is myself. Don't be the obstacle standing in your way. You CAN do this! Pull up your socks and...
Get to Work!
Work harder than anyone has ever worked before. Hard work gets rewarded and the more hard work you put in the better you get at it. If you continue to grind at it and put that time in then it is only a matter of time until you succeed. The only way to fail is to give up and quit.
People will tell you that it isn't that simple. It IS that simple. Period. End of story. Work hard, be awesome, share your awesome, and let people celebrate you with a My Little Pony dance party. Sticking with it and working hard to get what you want is the most difficult part of it all.
Hope
Be the light, the beacon of hope for others.
Share that light with anyone who will listen. This is the way to fight the darkness of doubt that tries to cloud everything. It helps breed confidence and belief in yourself. Others will follow suit. Doubt has its place and makes us strive to improve or lets us know when we need to work harder to squash it back down. There is always doubt, but at the same time there is always hope. Share the hope.
Welcome to the everything is fine portion of our program. Usually when someone says that it means the exact opposite. I feel like I am so far behind on the everything that I don't mind the fires burning all around me. This is the mad dash and we all go through this. The usual suspects that cause this are taking on too much, looming deadlines, and self-imposed pressure to be great. Today I am going to talk about all of these then end the post with a small treat. I wish I could send coffee and chocolate, but whenever I try to shove them through the tubes of the interwebs they get stuck. I'm hoping you will like the treat anyway.
Taking on too much!
This is something I tend to do over and over again. I have so many ideas that I think are the new Velcro that I want to do all of them at the same time. I need to remind myself that I do not have a time machine nor to I have 8 arms. Unfortunately cybernetics has not advanced far enough to give me extra arms. I am not a character in GURPS although sometimes I wish I could be a disembodied brain with psionic powers. Don't ask.
Taking on too many projects leads to not having time for any of them which leads to not finishing any of them which leads to staring at a wall while shoveling air from an empty ice cream container into my mouth... Don't judge! It's not like you've never done it before!
Looming Deadlines
These are the ghosts that haunt my dreams as of late.I have a novel coming out soon which means I have 18 bazillion things to do that are driving me crazy. OK I know that's a short trip, but I like to think I can cross the line to sanity's side every once in a while. The voices told me it was OK.
What doesn't help is that I decided to take on this monster called NaNoWriMo which I have never done before. It forces you to write until your fingers bleed then you must write more because the bone isn't poking out yet. At the end of the month I am also on vacation where I will spend most of it in a mad dash to complete 50K words for this National Novel Writing Month. The contest is over half way over and I am not near half way to the word count goal.
Self-Imposed Pressure
This is the biggest butthole of them all. Like Godzilla stomping on an ant kind of pressure. I am such a perfectionist that every little thing must be just right for me to be satisfied sometimes. It's hard for me to let go yet I know that nothing is ever truly perfect no matter how much I want it to be. Now that my novel is coming out I have to pretend it wasn't written by me because I know it is not perfect while promoting that it exists and was written by me.
Then there is the pressure of how it performs. I put up a good front with all the smiles and joking around, but inside I'm screaming. I do hope that people read it, enjoy it, and tell their friends. There is a small voice of doubt that is persistent in my head saying that it doesn't matter how hard I worked. I try to squish that voice, but the jerkface is like a cockroach swimming around in my head.
Mad Dash
So here I am typing away on ye old blog as part of the mad dash to get things done. Like giving away a free copy of the e-book version of my novel! Cue the rafflecopter! I TOLD YOU THERE WAS A TREAT weeeeeee
