Jesstern's Blog

One day I’ll write a book.

But that day will never come because I will always have one thing to do or another. I could wait till I’m retired. But then I might be busy traveling around the world. And look at all these books that are stacked up on my shelf. I promised myself I’d read them when I’m retired, too.

The truth is, we will never have the time to write a novel or learn to play the guitar or do any of those things we had said we would one day like to do. We will never have the time for them because we never make time for them. And secretly we really don’t want to start because just as your dreams may lead you to success it can also lead you to failure. So to start is to introduce the possibility of failure. It’s like going up to that girl you’ve had a crush on in school, if you never ask her out she’ll never be able to reject you. And so we live our lives without ever realising anything worth realising, meandering around the potholes, careful never to step into one of them lest we fall in too deep. But the pothole is Life’s way of saying, “Now’s your chance. Go for it.”

Each year, from 1st November to 30th November, budding authors from around the world participate in the National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo, organised by the Office of Letters and Light. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Still need convincing, listen to this TED talk by Google Software Engineer Matt Cutts, then read his blog post about his 30 Day NaNoWriMo Challenge.

And when you travel down this rabbit hole it might just lead you to Wonderland.