Procrastination is a nice safe place to be in, isn’t it? I know I find myself hiding behind it sometimes. 

Watch the video below to find out how to be courageous and get out of the procrastination safe zone. 

Hello my lovely writers, how are you? 

A few more words of wisdom about what it is to be a writer. What it is to be a creative and to keep on going because, what’s going on in your head is just as, if not more, important than what is actually going on on the page. 

It’s important to work on your heart and your head to keep yourself in the game and to keep yourself writing. To stop yourself giving up before you’ve finished so you can finish that story, novel, or book and go on to publish it or find yourself an agent or whatever path is right for you. 

One thing I’ve noticed about a lot of writers – and I will hold my hand up here as I do this myself from time to time – is we get stuck in procrastination and keep putting off our writing.

Procrastination is a safe place to be

The reason we do that is because procrastination is a nice, safe place to be, isn’t it? When we’re umming and ahhing about things, weighing up the pros and cons and heading down that research rabbit hole, it’s a very safe place to stay. 

It’s not necessarily the most fun or fulfilling place to be. It’s not going to get you where you want to be, which is a finished book with readers who love your stories. But it feels safe because it doesn’t require risk. It doesn’t require putting ourselves out on the skinny branches and taking a gamble on ourselves.

So we stay where we are. We stay procrastinating. We stay umming and ahhing and thinking about things because it feels safe. 

The only way you’re going to get to where you want to be with this vision you have for yourself as an author who has published books, who is selling books, who has readers, who has an agent or who has a publisher, is to stop procrastinating. Take the gamble on yourself, get out there on those skinny branches and be courageous. 

You’ve got to be courageous

You’ve got to be courageous. Even when you’re imagining the worst things in the world, even when you’re imagining people are going to say horrible things about your writing and about you for even daring to want to do this, you’ve still got to take a deep breath and do it anyway. That is the only way you’re going to get to where you want to be. 

If you want help to leave the procrastination safe zone, I’m the lady to come to. I’m the one who can help you. If you want to know how I can help you leave procrastination behind, send me an email at emma@emmadhesi.com.

It’s only by being courageous will you get to where you want to be.  But do you know what? You can do it. You can absolutely do it. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

If a writing routine sounds like drudgery, a bit of a chore, this video will change your mind!

Click the video below to watch, or read the transcript underneath it.

 

Hello my lovely writers, how are you? 

I want to talk about habit and routine today. This is a subject that’s been on my mind and I’m conscious it’s not something everybody finds appealing or glamorous.

A writing routine, or schedule, is something I often talk about along with how it’s really imperative, particularly in the early days when we’re learning, to invite writing into our lives. We need regular time slots to form a writing habit and one of the easiest ways to do this is to schedule in the time to write. 

Making habit sound more glamorous

But how can we make habit, scheduling and routine sound more glamorous? A little more exciting, a little more inviting? You can do this by not thinking of writing as a chore you’ve got to do and by not thinking of it as drudgery or something you must do like going to work.

Rather, a writing routine is something you are making space for so you can invite creativity in. If you create space to let creativity come in and do its thing, it will come in and do its thing. 

But we’ve got to give it that space to do so. We’ve got to create a little ring around some time, a ring around some space. We need to take a breath and let the creativity come to us because it will come. I promise you the creativity will come if you allow it to. 

The more time and space you ring fence for your writing and the more time you hold sacred for this in your week, the easier and the quicker that creativity will come. 

Writing will become a habit

Writing will become this effortless habit and, even on those days where it feels like it’s going to be more challenging, you know you can do it because you’ve done it before. 

You’ll have the evidence that you are a creative being, that when you do sit down and you do have thirty minutes to give over to your writing, even if you only write for fifteen of those, you’ve given yourself the breathing room you needed to get those words down on paper. 

So, rather than thinking of routine and scheduling in your writing as drudgery or a chore, think of it as a luxury you get to have. A luxury and an experience you get to put into your week that feels good, fun and exciting. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

If you’re lacking in confidence, this video is for you as I discuss how even some of the most successful people in the world, such as Leonard Bernstein, can suffer with imposter syndrome.

Click the video below to watch, or read the transcript underneath it.

Hello my lovely writers, how are you?

Today I’m talking about how even the most successful writers amongst us are lacking in confidence. 

I’ve been watching a movie called Maestro, based on the life of Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia. There’s a scene where a journalist is asking Leonard Bernstein about his career and you can see Leonard sitting in his chair feeling angsty. 

Even Leonard Bernstein lacks confidence

By this time in the movie, Leonard Bernstein has written West Side Story, On The Town and various other things. He’s also been conducting at the Philharmonic for a decade by then, but he’s still sitting there angsty, saying, ‘I haven’t done enough. It’s not good enough. I should have done more by now. I should have done better by now.’ 

These words really resonated with me because I hear this a lot from writers I work with as they share their feelings of never quite having done enough, never quite being enough. 

As confident as Leonard Bernstein was on the outside, inside there was still a lot of insecurity and a lot of not being at ease with himself. He felt inferior and compared himself to others, always thinking he should be doing better and striving for something more. He couldn’t see he’d written some of the best music of his generation, if not the best ever. 

I see this in my writers who are looking to write a book. They want to write a novel, or non-fiction – whatever it might be – but they never feel they’re good enough. Their own feelings of insecurity around their writing really come to the forefront and it’s because they’re not doing the work on themselves from the inside. 

What matters is what you feel on the inside

I want to emphasise to you that it doesn’t matter what you write and it doesn’t matter whether you sell a million copies or ten copies of your book. 

What really matters is how you feel about that book on the inside. You’re always going to have success if you feel validated by yourself, if you feel that internal validation. Internal validation is something you must work on if you don’t already feel it. 

I know writers who have already published, either traditionally or self-published, and they’re doing well but they do not see it and they do not feel it. You’ve got to work from the inside out. 

If you recognise that in you, I encourage you to grab my 21 Days of Writing Inspiration. These are short little videos that arrive in your inbox every day for 21 days to help you feel motivated, feel encouraged, and help you start to build that self-belief you need if you want to thrive in the writing world. 

Click the link to get your 21 Days of Writing Inspiration. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

Do you feel you need permission to write? I’m here to tell you, you don’t need permission.

Click the video below to find out why you don’t need permission to write.

Hello my lovely writers, how are you? 

You want to be a writer. You want to be a writer but you keep putting off your writing, you find it hard to get to the desk, you find it hard to get to the page and to get your butt in that chair. 

One thing I’ve realised about a lot of writers is they struggle because they’ve not given themselves permission to write. 

So, if you need to hear this, I’m giving you permission. 

You have permission to write

You have permission to write. You are allowed to write. If it’s something that gives you joy, if there’s a bit of your brain that says you need to write – either on a daily or a weekly basis – then you have permission to do it. You don’t need anybody else’s permission. 

You don’t need my permission but, if you need to hear that, I’m giving permission to you so you can feel good about getting to the page and so you don’t feel guilty about wanting to write. 

When we think about other people who do things they enjoy, like go to the gym, go running, play golf, go to a tap-dancing class or go to the cinema, whatever it is, they don’t feel guilty about it. 

Writing is important to us

They don’t feel they need permission from other people to do these activities, so why do we writers often feel we need permission to take ourselves off and spend a little time by ourselves and our characters? Spend our time not doing any harm to anybody else, not taking anything from anybody else but simply being allowed to express ourselves in word form, which is important to us. 

There’s dance, there’s sculpture, there’s art, there’s crochet, there are so many other artistic forms but, for us, it’s the written word. We love writing. We love telling stories. We want to put our stories together, put our books together and share something with the world. 

You don’t need permission to do that. But just in case you do, I’m giving it to you. You have permission to do something that gives you joy, that makes you happy, that is a personal challenge and a step towards the dream life you want to live. 

So, you have permission to write. Get writing. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

You don’t need to be a perfect writer to find the perfect reader. You are already good enough!

Click the video below to find out why you don’t need to be a better writer than everybody else – you just need some self-belief.

Hello my lovely writers. 

I wanted to talk today about the myth that, as a writer, you’ve got to be better than everybody else in order to find readers or get that book deal, or get published and find your Amazon fans. 

I want to let you know that it really isn’t true. You don’t have to be the best. 

You don’t need to be a perfect writer

You have to be good enough and many writers are good enough. 

They don’t aspire to be the Pulitzer Prize winner or the writer of a generation. They want to share stories and get a message across to their readers. Whether the message is about love, justice, or the climate – whatever it might be, there’s a message somebody wants to share through their books. 

You don’t have to be perfect to do that. You just have to know enough.

And you have to get started.

You need self-belief

You must have the self-belief in your own voice and your own capabilities to bring that story to life and take your readers on an adventure. 

When you do that, it doesn’t matter the level of skill you’ve got. What matters is that you touch someone’s heart, you speak to them soul to soul and you speak to them on an emotional level, not on a ‘Wow, their grammar’s great,’ level. That’s not what people are looking for. Readers don’t care about that – they just want a good, smooth read. 

If you can relate to your characters, bring them to life and show them the empathy they need, your reader is going to connect with them and that is going to find you your number one fans and the people who will continue to come back to you time and time again because they know they’re going to get a brilliant story from you. 

It’s not being better than anybody else that’s going to get you your readers and get you where you want to be. It is getting the words on the page and trusting that you are good enough. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!