It’s that time of the year again

I was whining to M.H. the other day about how I was so jealous I hadn’t come up with certain brilliant ideas because if I had, I could definitely—maybe easily!—have written the best-selling books that resulted from them. My problem, I said, was that I never got any brilliant book ideas.

He reminded me of an idea I told him about months ago and informed me that it was good enough, that I could definitely work with it, that I just needed to put in the effort. Hmm. Maybe so.

So that leaves me face to face with the actual problem: that I am terrified to start a project like this.

I keep thinking of Gretchen Rubin’s advice for tackling a huge thing, which is to set aside 15 minutes—and only 15 minutes—to work on it every day. That idea is really more for projects like “organize 22 years’ worth of photos”—which I also desperately want to do—than for creative endeavors. But I wonder if I could apply the same principle so that I make at least some progress on the book every day, even if it’s minuscule. Something like 200 words? That’s shorter than this blog post.

So I’m thinking New Year’s resolution. If the book turns out to be terrible, I won’t really have lost that much of my time (and income-earning potential) to it. And if I do chicken out, I can always switch to that photo organization thing and still call it a win.