Stop Waiting Around for Permission to Start — Your Work is Good Enough

It’s time to take control of your creative life. The gatekeepers are gone.

Is my manuscript good enough for the publisher? Will my screenplay be green-lit by the studio? Is this play award-worthy? What should I wear to my Oscar speech? Does my butt look fat in this Lamborghini? Are we good enough? Are we ready? Who will give us permission to start?

I’ve got some news, but please don’t spread it. It’s best we keep this a secret.

The gatekeepers are gone. It’s a facade to keep you from trying new things — from doing your best work. The awards aren’t important. Most of the awards are rigged. If you want to be a New York Times bestselling author all you need to do is pay a book-buying service ~$200k and blam, you’re on the list. It’s estimated that 50–100 books/year on the bestsellers lists are bought, not earned. Every. Year. So, be careful what you wish for.

The lists are rigged. The awards are little more than paper, tin, and a self-pat on the back. Let’s keep our sights on the work instead.

The gatekeepers don’t exist anymore. It’s time to stop asking for permission and spend all the vanity-energy improving your craft. That new-bestseller-smell wears off once your book leaves the showroom floor. It’s time for some asset-investing.

What looks like a wall today is just an excuse not to do your own thing.

The gatekeepers are no longer relevant. Indie authors (the ones who do the work required) are making more money than ever. The playing field is flattening. Even authors published traditionally now realize they’ve got to promote their own work if they want to sell it.

Your work IS good enough.

But we’ll have no way to tell if you don’t ship it. You don’t need permission anymore. It no longer matters if you’re blue, green, pink, or orange. The only thing that matters is good content or a good story at least one other person enjoys.

Once you get one reader you can get five.

How to start

Whether you write, sing, code, or paint — it’s best to start small and start now. Start freaking today. Once you start, never stop. Your first work will be crap. Get the crap out of the way as fast as possible.

Fail quickly.

You’ve got to fail first, creatively. There’s no zero-to-awesome path. We do our best today, so we can do a little better tomorrow. If you’ve done nothing yesterday it’s really hard to get better.

With zero permission comes much responsibility.

The playing field is wide-open. This means there’s zero barrier to entry, which equals a whole lot of garage being churned at the bottom level. The bottom is crowded. Everyone fights for the scraps down there. There’s no ceiling at the top.

There’s plenty of room for creators who care.

If you look at your work as a blue-collar vocation (the prime motivation here at The Book Mechanic) you’ll try to improve your craft by one percent every day.

Don’t start big.

If you’re a writer, try an article or short story. Start before you’re ready, but don’t start so big you’ll get discouraged with an insurmountable first project. There’s time.

You’re a craftsperson for life, not for a single project.

No one’s coming to save you. You’ve got to self-motivate your way to your best work. If you start today your body of work will be bigger tomorrow and next week. If you wait, that body of work stays the same — zero.

We get better by do-ing, not by thinking about the work. Plan your work five percent of the time and spend ninety-five percent of the time doing the work (see the post below for more on that).

How to keep going

I’ve found that writing every day has saved me from myself. I look at the daily writing as my goal. Not whether I’m good enough as a writer, but that I’ve got to produce.

It’s much easier to keep a daily habit than the sporadic work-vomit.

I know plenty writers who don’t write every day. These folks write in chunks and take breaks instead. When I work this way I become more-judgmental of my work. Impostor syndrome shows-up. All the cognitive biases pop their ugly heads and hold me back.

When I write daily, the focus changes to a production quota, not a good-enough judgement.

This daily work gives me the freedom to fail. To write and try new angles. To publish without waiting for permission. If I don’t create daily I start looking over my shoulder for the gatekeepers.

With the quota model, most of the self-doubt goes away.

I think it’s critical to work every day (or almost daily). There’s no downtime in your ideas. You don’t lose the train of thought in your writing. You don’t lose the voice in your work.

Find your carrot

What motivates you to practice your craft? What can you do as a reward to help get yourself to daily creating? What do you have that’s different than everyone in your space?

What little fire can you light to keep your motivation when times are tough?

When you create every day you develop such a large body of work no one can touch you. You will dominate your space — large and small. Not everything you touch will be your best work, but you’ll have so many more opportunities to create your best work.

This is the advantage you’ll have over the dabbler.

Many creators don’t realize this, but you’re in a battle for attention. This is attention you’ve got to take. No one will hand it over easily. With a zero-barrier entry system there’s a fog of choice out there. We must both create and promote our work daily.

Not only is no one coming to save us, but no one will buy our work unless we tell people about it.

We build our own gate around our work by owning our list. When we control the list we control our message and the delivery system. We control how often we sell our work and we’re no longer at the mercy of someone’s platform to keep our income hostage.

It’s time. The gatekeepers are gone. No one’s watching the desk.

We’re waiting for you.