This question keeps popping up and it's starting to irritate me.
Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. - Mark Twain.
I'm glad more people are writing books, but my question is, what's stopping you?
Don't get me wrong, writing your first book is going to be a challenge. You might be struggling to find the time to write, or maybe just getting into the zone feels impossible. My point? There are a hundred reasons not to write. So here are a few chunky ones to counter their weight.
It's a story worth telling.There are more stories to be heard than I can count, and no matter what your idea is, it deserves to be told. Even if it's not that significant to you, writing is a form of expression. It reveals who you are on the inside, and that brings us so much closer to everyone around us.
You're going to edit it anyway. People aren't perfect. There's no way that anyone on earth is going to be 100% certain there are no spelling or grammar errors after writing a book, and even if you're 99.9% certain, that means 0.1%, around 40 words for me, are wrong. We all know what it's like to read a spelling mistake, painful. So put away that perfectionist ego until you're ready to review your book, reading every word. Auto-correct is your new best friend. He's faster than you, more perceptive and less forgiving. If you really want a quote to help you remember that one, "Write drunk, edit sober"- Ernest Hemingway. Don't take it literally and get drunk, just make sure you have completely different mindsets for writing and editing.
Try or fail. Let's say I want to write a 60,000 word novel in 60 days. Wait for it. It doesn't matter how achievable you think that goal is. Every day that I try, I progress by 1.7%. Every day that I don't try, I progress by 0%. I know 1.7% seems like a tiny number, but achieving a goal that you set out to do is a ginormous boost for your motivation. That tiny 1.7% is a W. Something that you wake up to without thinking "All I got today was uglier". Don't think of failure as not waking up to a finished book. Every day you live there will be things that you want, and challenges to overcome. But if you reject the smaller accomplishments in life, you're casting a spotlight onto the bigger accomplishments, and that puts the small ones in the shadows. Life is beautiful no matter how far you are in it. Sometimes we just haven't put in the right lighting to see it.
Writing is a waste of time. No-one will read it. They will. If you honestly think writing is a waste of time, then I don't know why you;re reading this. You've wasted much more of your life by reading than writing, so the joke's on you.
I don't have time to write. False. Assuming you live to the age of 102 (and that you can write from 2 years old), you have 52596000 minutes to write a book. And since the average typing speed is 40 words per minute, that's enough for 35064 60,000 word books in your entire lifetime. Seriously, if you can find 1500 hours/62 days/2 months in your entire life to spare, you can write a book. That's like setting your alarm clock an hour earlier, or using a computer/mobile during your lunch break, or even waiting until retirement.
Be Unstoppable. I had to learn this one the hard way, even though my teachers tried to tell me since I was in primary school. It doesn't matter how many times you fail, how many times you lose, how many problems you have that slow you down. Being able to keep going is the only way to reach your goals. If you need inspiration, imagine the Polar Express. The train goes off the tracks, there are plenty of bends and times where everyone thought the train wouldn't make it. And at one point the train stopped. That's the moment where everything is in the hands of the writer. The point where he decides whether the story will be stopped or not. If you can relate to that train even for a moment, I'm sure you can decide whether your story ends here, after dodging so many obstacles.
There's always a reason to write, to keep going. You just have to figure out what fuels you.