Distinctions and ice-cream

This is a picture of my ‘I Have Submitted An Entire Novel to Two Things Today’ ice-cream:

It was also my ‘Even If This Step Is Not The Step, it is A Step’ ice-cream.

The Things in question were both open calls for full manuscripts by different publishers. The more we love something, the easier it ironically is to mix ‘excuses’ with ‘reasons’ to not do the thing; not choose the status quo of not having written it over the vulnerability of swapping the perfect thing in your head for the work-in-progress in the world.

Instead, we stick with believing our own propaganda:

1. There will be a right time to write, and this is not it.
2. I will have enough confidence to do this, but not yet.
3. It’s not a good enough idea, because if it were than someone else would have done it.
4. If I were going to do it, I’d have done it years ago.

While my brain play all four of those Greatest Hits on repeat – those ideas that live, like the Young Ones’ fifth housemate, ever-present in our brains – I gifted myself the time anyway. With no guarantees of return on investment, of inspiration, of anything other than narrowing the gap between what I saw in my head and what I saw on the page.

Because even if nothing comes of either open call, my book is in a better place than it’s ever been because I gifted it that time.

My week of giving myself that time coincided with being able to say…

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Congratulations Shravya and Sharanya!

I found out yesterday these very hard-working and talented young LAMDA Exams coaching clients of mine both received distinctions for their Grade 6 Reading for Performance and Grade 3 Speaking in Public.

Both of them, and many other clients – not just the under-18s – started their time with me believing confidence in writing and speaking would be about getting over or getting rid of the feeling of being scared.

But by the time they’re ready for their performances, they’ve learnt there’s something that works a lot better than blocking your feelings. Something more important and more useful than getting over them:

Admitting all our feelings are part of the story. But not the final word.

I would love to be able to show every client the first time they asked me, ‘But what if I get a word wrong?’ or ‘But what if something goes wrong?’

They’re sometimes disappointed that the truth is so much kinder.

Audiences don’t connect with answerphone messages.

They aren’t looking for the perfect word and the right answer.

They respond to seeing we are as human as they are.

Just as, looking out there beyond the edge of the stage, we’re looking for exactly the same thing from them.

Think On The Page…

1. What are your brain’s ‘Greatest Hits’ to convince you to choose the status quo over taking a new step in a direction that matters to you?
2. When has it been easier to tell yourself other people have more time, or less fear?
3. What would believing that give you? What would not believing that give you?
4. If you knew you had every right and every capability, what would you gift time for?