Blog Post #2 - Don't Do, Learn

Last week I posted about overcoming writers guilt, which is a big part of what holds me back as a writer. This week, I want to talk about another big obstacle I face – fear of failure. Like guilt, fear of failure isn’t limited to writing. There are thousands of articles, vlogs and self help books out there to help people overcome this particular fear, which if nothing else at least provides the comfort of knowing you aren’t alone in this way of thinking.

My partner, who has the self-discipline and personal drive of Batman, is great at pushing through his fears. The other night, I sat him down and poked him with a stick until he told me the secret to his success. His answer completely baffled me. He never tries to do anything. He just tries to learn something.

What the heck did he mean by this? To put it simply: instead of writing a novel, learn how to write a novel. Every day, when you sit down to work on your book, don’t think about how you have to finish a novel. Think of it as you learning how to write a finished novel, so one day you can. Sure, you are thinking to yourself, we’ve all been a student. Why is this such ground breaking advice? The trick, according to my partner, is to never set out to do. Only ever set out to learn how.

When you put yourself in the mindset of a student, the pressure melts away. A student is never expected to do, only to prepare for when they will actually do in the future. If you are learning how to write a novel, then you don’t feel the pressure of having to complete a novel. If you then take what you wrote, and use it to learn how to approach an agent, it’s OK if you don’t find one. You could learn how to self-publish. Learn how to promote a book. Learn how to write a series, or make a blog, or pitch a television pilot. Where normally all these things would feel completely overwhelming, simply setting out to learn all these things is much easier. The end goal isn’t to become a published author. The end goal is to learn. There’s no better way to learn than by doing.

Lots of motivational experts talk about finding your end goal, and working towards it. If your end goal shifts to ‘learning as much as I can’, then you are not only more flexible to take advantage of opportunities you may not have seen, but you are also reducing the pressure on yourself to perform. As long as you have learned from your experiences, then you have succeeded! If you keep learning, writing more books, submitting more queries, publishing more content, then you will be succeeding simply by doing.

This mind shift is subtle, and if you embrace it, you will find yourself changing your approach to everything you do with your writing. Focus on your end goal – learning something new, and you can’t fail! Who knows, you may even find yourself learning how to manage a successful writing career one day.