I am so excited! I am jumping up and down with enthusiasm. I just finished the first draft for my book!
Now before I tell you a little bit more about it let me just share that it was not so obvious to write this. I started writing a book almost 10 years ago and it is still half-finished. Then this idea came along and I tried to ignore it for a while because it just didn’t make sense. There was no logical combination with my work and I have no experience with this topic, so why should I spend a lot of time pursuing this idea? Plus there was this other book to finish.
It reminds me of this quote from Einstein:
“If at first the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it.”
And this idea was not only absurd, it was quite persistent. I had written the first chapter in the early summer of 2014 and I enjoyed it. It was fun. On a sunny Saturday afternoon I just started writing the beginning of a novel. It just poured out of me. I had to go over to my parents for dinner that evening and I was even using my memo recorder in the car to continue capturing the thoughts that kept coming in. I reread it the next day and thought it would be great if one day I had a lot of time on my hand and then perhaps I could take a long vacation to write this book, just for fun. So I stored it for ‘someday’.
Until almost 9 months later I realized that this novel was just another way for me to channel my creativity and my ideas. It didn’t have to ‘fit’ into a business model and it doesn’t even have to speak to my current clients (although I hope that it does ;-). It’s just important for me to get this out there, if for no other reason than to get this idea off my back. So in the past months I have made time almost every day to write. It was fun, it was not always easy, but mostly I enjoyed it.
I wanted to share this with you first of all because I am just so excited! But second of all, perhaps there is something you are not doing because it doesn’t seem to make sense. Let’s take a page from Einstein. If the idea is not absurd at first then there is no hope for it. And this may sound weird but all really innovative ideas sounded crazy when they were first voiced. Like: the world is not flat, which was an outrageous idea at the time. Dangerous even. Now our ideas don’t have to be that epic but I believe we can overlook valuable ideas because they don’t seem to fit in.
So is there something that rings a bell for you, something you want to do but have rationalized yourself out of? If there is I highly recommend you to reconsider. If you are resisting an idea you are stopping the flow. Sometimes following up on it is the only way to get it out of your system. And you never know what it might lead to 😉
I know I am so glad I pursued this and I look forward to the next steps in finalizing my novel so I can publish it.
Update: my novel has been published. Leave your details below and I’ll send you the first chapter right now!
