Make the thing and come alive.

Words on creative resistance you need to read.

Once again, I am letting this be a ‘one session’ entry. I’ve got a book to write, and so I’m not over-editing my pieces, but leaving them raw and in the exact emotion I wrote them in. This will resonate especially with authors, mothers who are creating but the message can apply to any creative and any project.

So, I broke ground on my new book this afternoon.

When I say I broke new ground I mean, I’d already structured the book and written a few pieces that could be included, but I was resisting really starting.

There are always bits of the book that feel the hardest to write. For me, this is the backstory. Old stuff. History that I have to dig to share about in detail. This is real writing work and doesn’t feel as buoyant and flowy as writing about ‘what feels alive right now’.

I’ve found that with writing books, there is a point at which you become ‘locked in’. It’s the point at which you’re committed, and you’ve made enough of an internal promise so that you won’t wriggle out of it. The promise to finish becomes more important than the many lies of ‘the resistance’.

Resistance will tell you that this is yet another one of your impulsive projects and will probably end up incomplete in the Dropbox graveyard like so many of your other projects.

It will always use the lies it knows you’ll believe.

Especially the one about your lack of follow through, how excitable you so quickly become and then how easily your motivation fizzles out.

It’ll say:

“You’re not going to finish it anyway, why start?”

“See? The mountain is too high. Just write on Substack, forget a book.”

“Books aren’t good business. Make a digital product instead.”

“You sure this stuff even matters?”

“See, it’s not flowing— looks like it’s not meant to be.”

“You’re not special and the world doesn’t need this.”

“Your kids don’t need a mum who’s writing a book. You’ll become too distracted.”

It is so familiar that it sounds like your voice. You have believed it too many times. But not this time.

It is not your voice.

It is not God’s voice either.

The start of the real work is always the hardest. The idea is exciting and fun and full of levity. You get to jot down all of your ideas, brainstorm a cool title, even pin a board of cover inspo.

The idea of the creation is always the fun, easy part.

The work of moving through the relentless resistance is the real work and it’s work that many simply cannot do.

Please do it.

I believe you and I both know the difference between this voice of resistance and our intuition. I really do.

Sometimes your intuition is what’s telling you not to do it.

Sometimes, a creative project really is not worth it.

Sometimes, we are biting off more than we can chew in motherhood and God is lovingly helping us see a distraction for what it is.

Sometimes, we really are creating from a false place of ego, or desire for relevance, or escape, or delusion.

But I know the difference between them now and I hope you do too.

One feels imaginary.

One feels visceral.

I have a story to tell about this shortly.

I’ve got at least three books that are complete and unpublished in the treasure chest of my online cloud. It was the right thing for me not to publish them, not the voice of resistance. I went through such a hard and fast evolution, and very quickly I realised that those were not works I wanted to put out anymore.

Funny thing is, now I’m actually re-writing them both. Same topics, newer truth, newer voice.

You know what I believe about books? You start writing them many years before you actually sit down to write them. The books form in your soul, and once they reach a place where you have got to spit them out, you sit. You write.

This book has been in the works for a long time and I have wriggled my way out of completing it many times.

I’ll do a course instead.

I’ll just do Substack.

I’ll do events.

I don’t need the pressure of a project when I have my three little kids at home.

But the reality is, if I’m not using my life force on GOOD drama (like wrestling resistance and writing), I will use it on BAD drama, like scrolling and being overly nosy in certain internet drama with my popcorn (which has been particularly entertaining recently).

I have wriggled out of writing by scrolling.

I have wriggled out of writing by doing faffy, insignificant things like playing around with the font on the working title and re-ordering the sections.

You wanna know how else I wriggled out of writing?

I hired a book coach.

Now, don’t get me wrong— book coaches are probably the one thing that helps many authors write their books.

But it wasn’t that for me.

It was once again, layering more and more faff over the top of the thing I needed to do…

Write.

I’ve never had a book coach before and look, I’ve only self published my books and never gone big like NYT best selling author so maybe I could do with one. But that’s never been my goal. My goal has always be to write what I want to write, how I want to write it, and to publish my books without anyone breathing down my neck telling me to change my voice a little here and a little there and then…. Publish my book 18 month later when I’m already over it.

There are many reasons why I self publish.

But my point is, I’m not above a book coach by any means.

The truth is, I just don’t want one— at least not at this stage of the book. Maybe later when I’m deciding where/how to publish… but I’m not someone who does well with interference in my process. A book coach is someone who helps you structure your book, works through ideas and messaging and tone etc… but they are not an editor. An editor comes later.

I always work with an editor. I absolutely need someone to chomp through my repetitive writing and help me be a little less sentimental about the first chapter than I am already too emotionally attached to. (I’ve already found me editor, by the way!! A new one. I’ve worked with a different one each time— all great!).

But I just need to write.

I told myself, I told my husband it was for accountability.

In my gut, I knew it was yet another step I added in to avoid ….

SITTING MY BUM DOWN AND WRITING THE BOOK.

We do this. We do this with businesses we start, we do it with Substack, we do it with all of our creative projects. We spend so much money on getting branding and web and smell and taste perfect thinking that if we throw a bunch of money at something then we can avoid the work.

No.

At least not for those of us who write our own books. We’re not in ghost writer territory here.

We layer all the shiny stuff on top, we faff around in Canva and Pinterest, we layer more and more onto the process to delay the ONE thing we most need to do….

WRITE.

When I was interviewing this book coach, I knew in my gut that I was walking down a path that wasn’t for me. I knew it, but I ignored it.

This is NO shade on the woman at all, by the way. My process is independent and my own.

I read through the contract line by line and saw that I could exit the contract within seven days of hiring her.

How funny is that? I signed the contract, paid the fee, because I didn’t want to admit that I knew it wasn’t right. But I knew it enough to ensure I read I could exit within 7 days. It’s like I wanted to make triply sure my intuition was on point, you know?

Needless to say, I exited the book coach arrangement before even beginning it, once I realised that my entering it, was an avoidance strategy.

We do this with our creative work— we play around in canva, fuss over the colours, obsess over branding, fiddle with the description too many times, hire someone we don’t need, talk about it on instagram….

Everything we can possibly do to trick us into thinking we’re doing the thing…but we’re not.

Set a timer.

Put your phone away.

Become the kind of disciplined and focussed that is rare as gold these days.

Stop pretending you’re doing it when you’re not.

Make the thing.

I wrote 4700 words today in a 2.5 hour session (with a little break in between for breastfeeding and a little scroll).

I did not stop to edit for typos or decide if something was politically correct. No self-censoring. I just wrote.

When I slammed my laptop shut and walked into the kitchen to cook dinner and be with my family— I felt alive. I felt the energy that comes when you do the REAL thing, and not all the other fluffy pretend things. I was present, undistracted, because I didn’t need to stew over the creating I didn’t do. I did it. So when I slammed that laptop shut, I felt ordered. I didn’t take 2 hours from my kids to sit and pretend… I made something. I said the things God put in my chest to say.

The part I was most resisting— writing my backstory— stitched together some sores inside of me I didn’t even know were in need of that kind of love.

Hours before I was throwing an inner tantrum at the idea of writing about my teenage life. ‘Ugh, I don’t want to. Boring.’ That’s what it sounded like inside.

But once I put the timer on and stuck to the promise of writing, I realised how much I needed to write that part. That’s the thing with books, and our creations… the process of creating them heals, fortifies and blesses us immensely.

Your true creativity will add to your life force.

It will add to your aliveness.

You will feel BETTER for those you love and not like you’ve just been staring at a screen scrolling and pretending you were making.

This is so important for me as a mum— I will take little slices of time to create, but I want that creative time to then pour back into my home and my family. Sitting and scrolling, getting caught up in internet news is not life giving, but creating is.

We get to make disciplined use of our time.

We get to work through the all-familiar resistance that has chewed away at our creative life force too many times.

We get to tell the truth that not all time spent at our laptop is equal, or productive, or life giving and we get to snap out of patterns that confuse true creativity for mindless internet activity.

Do the right creative thing, and let it pour more aliveness into your home and family.

Write.

PK XX