Hello and welcome to line number 3 of our free audio series. The lies you tell yourself for why you're not writing your book. Oh, this is a good one. Line number three. Oh man, this is our. is maybe the biggest one. The lie is, I need to know how it's all gonna work out. I need to know if I'll make it. I need to know if I'm gonna get a publishing deal. I don't want to do it unless I know I'm going to get a publishing deal. Well... Okay, here's the thing. Um, if you're writing a novel, You have to write the book before you could get the deal. Unfortunately. Unless I'm talking to a massive celebrity or someone with maybe a 1000000 followers on TikTok. I don't know, who can sell off of a proposal. Who knows? You know, you probably, you might be obsessed with some exception that you heard of and go for it. But most likely, the majority of everyone that's ever been published as a novelist, they have to write a book first. And that's what they sell. They sell the book. So, needing certainty, in order to start, Uh, good luck. I mean, I'm not trying to be harsh. I'm just trying to be honest. Because that's just not how creative industries work, to be honest. I mean, you can't, I can't think of any that work that way. You don't get the certainty first. You, it's a leap of faith. Writing a book is a leap of faith. It's a labor of love. And there's no way to know if you're going to make it. There's no way to even know what that means. What does it mean to make it? And I think if you, I get this lie very, very deeply because I have been there and I stayed there for like maybe 20 years. I needed to have some sort of certainty before I committed to the time. And I regret that. That's probably my biggest regret in life, and I try not to have very many regrets. So please don't let this be you. Please just, if you feel called to write a book, just write it. And let the rest fall where it falls. Don't, it's like, like, it's serious, but it's not that serious because you're doing it because you love writing, most likely you're doing it because you love reading. So attaching so much pressure and expectation to this thing that you love is the quickest way to make it something you loathe. So needing to know if you're going to make it or if it's going to sell, It's it's a tactic to just keep you protected from trying. And trying is the spice of life, trying is vulnerable, and it, your realistic, self preservation brain wants to tell you not to try, but trying is the very thing that ultimately we always feel the proudest about. We are very, very, very proud of ourselves when we try. We are not as proud of ourselves when we say, you know what? I spent 5 years waiting to be certain. And I can't get those 5 years back. The time is going to pass, no matter what, you may as well be doing the thing that you really want to be doing. And you may as well put the time in, doesn't mean quit your job, doesn't mean throw every thing to the ground right now. Don't burn your life down. Unless unless you want to. I mean, hey, I'm not here to judge. But I think that having needing certainty in life is a surefire way to live very small. So I don't even think this is about writing the book anymore. Now this is just about life. Because there's literally no certainty. It's just not, it's not available. It's not the thing that's on the menu. And yet, what we do, if we want certainty so bad, and if we need certainty so bad, the one thing that we're gonna do is make our dreams and our lives smaller to make sure it's contained enough to be certain. Because anytime you have any inkling to open up to trying and maybe and faith, and I don't know why I feel called to do this, but I'm going to do it. You're no longer in the realm of certainty anymore. Certainty is no longer on the table for you. And so the only way certainty can be on the table is if you control everything, and the only way to control everything is to make everything very, very, very small. And so, if that's the way you want to live and that feels safest to you, Please go ahead. But, The time is gonna pass anyway. And I hope that you have courage and you do the thing that's on your heart because I'm guessing if you're the type of person that would download this audio series, it is on your heart, and don't let that, don't let that belief and that lie, that you need to know, where it's going to go before doing it. Otherwise, it's a waste of your time or you're going to be disappointed. Like, I'm telling you that holding the book in your hands that you wrote, that you didn't know if you could write, holding 70,000 words in your hands or 80,000 words or 100,000 words. It's a really, really good feeling. And that would have nothing to do with publishing at all. It's just the feeling of accomplishment of a thing that you wanted to do of the time required to do that and the diligence and devotion required to do that. So, Actually, saying, I need to know where this is going to go to in order for me to do it is cheapening how transformative and amazing the actual process of devotion is. And anytime you need certainty, you're cutting yourself off from wonder and risk. And excitement and unexpected and surprise and magic, essentially. And so attaching the need for certainty to a thing that requires faith like writing a book before it sells or writing a book proposal before it sells or doing anything creative before it's paid you back. You're underestimating how much the process pays you. And how much the feeling of 6 months going by, not writing, sucks. Six months going by having made progress feels good. That's enough for now. Let the rest be decided on its own. And this is just a big block. This is just a big limiting belief type of block. that, Overcoming it by committing to the process and writing the thing, even when you don't know where it's going to go, and just saying that writing the thing is the thing worth doing because I feel called to write the thing and I honor my callings. That's enough. That's enough for, you know, for now. And let that be enough because that's going to be a beautiful lesson because say you do go down the road of publishing books and having books published, really the most important thing that you can do is you're always writing. You're always writing more books. I mean, I'm not saying like every single day or every single year. I'm just saying that like, you know that you could write a book. And because that's what publishing is going to ask of you. So if you have to know where it's going to go, even when you have books published, you're not going to know what the next book is going to do. And you're not really doing it for the advance. you know, necessarily. So, that uncertainty of what the book is going to do, that is going to follow you the, even, even with all the dreams coming true that you could imagine. It'll still follow you every single person before their book comes out, doesn't know what it's going to do. And you, it's very hard to predict no matter what. And so, you know, that's just the creative process, leaning into that is, is the beautiful thing. So yeah, just go for it. Just go for it. Okay. That's today.