I want you to imagine for a moment a few feelings of excitement. Something that you can genuinely get excited about. Think, about how exciting it would be to have an entire novel outline laid out before you complete with chapter titles, synopsis, commentary, imagery, sensory and character reveal details. All thirty or so of those scenes all laid out, nice and neat … color coded and ready to have an interesting, insightful and fun story written for each one.

A story that will come easily and fluidly, because you take this moment to become introspective, and think about things that matter to you and how you live and the world around you. You incorporate things from your memories into the story. Things from your recent memories and your childhood. Things from yesterday. Things from today, and things that you dream about for your future. You find little lessons and morals … you incorporate them subtly and not so subtly into your story.

You make it fun, to imagine what your characters would do and say in those same situations. You know, that your beliefs are not always their beliefs, but you don’t care. They have their own minds and imaginations and biases. That’s what makes it all so fun. That’s what makes telling a story exciting.

Sometimes, it doesn’t even matter if you have a moral or larger theme to get across. Sometimes you find yourself in the heat of the moment, and just want to relate a funny, violent, gross, heart-breaking, boring, pleasant, disastrous scene. That’s OK too, and your readers will love you for it. They’ll love you, because your being honest. Honest about yourself, and your view of the world, as seen through the eyes of many different characters.

Now, imagine what it’s like to have done a good days worth of writing. How happy that makes you feel on the inside. Knowing, that you put some good ideas out there … some shitty ones as well, but that’s OK. How else will your readers know the good ones are good, if you don’t have the shitty ones to compare them too. Think, about how good you’ll feel after a full week of writing and hitting your word counts every day. 5 days in a row … 10 days in a row … 100 … 1000 days in a row. Think about all the stories you’ll tell.

Now, think about how good it feels to hit that publish button on KDP. Think about that sense of wonder … how many will love it? How many will hate it? Everything seems new and possible when a story meets it’s readers. There will be thousands of people reading what you wrote. Thousands of people getting to peer into your mind, and understanding or disagreeing a little bit with your view of the world. That new novel could be a smash hit. It could be the best thing you’ve ever written, or the worst. To someone out there, I’m sure it will be both. That’s the excitement. That’s the fun. That’s life. But … the best part of all, is that you get to do it all over again, starting … NOW!