Here is the cure for not being a chicken sh*t your whole life (complete with Berenstain Bears footy pajamas):
Start writing.
Publicly.
Right now.
Today.
Before you have anything "good" to say.
....And stop sissying out.
Stop waiting until you've got four advanced degrees, twenty years of experience, and a title from the King of England. Nobody cares about your big, stupid resume from 2006; they care that you have a perspective.
You don't need to be an expert, you only need to have a brain.
I don't want to read a newsletter from an expert, anyway: they're probably boring, and bald! I mean, bald is cool. Stanley Tucci. No lice. Have we worried about lice since we were 12??? Do adults get lice??? IS THIS JUST A LITTLE KID THING? DO YOU REMEMBER THE COMBS????????
Okay, okay, off tangent. But, listen: newsletters are not things reserved for the upper echelon of Harvard, like you must first own a yacht and 40 pink shirts with whales on them before you're "allowed." They are not reserved for people who have book deals, and people who invented beer cheese (would read though), and people who have passed some invisible fancy test that tells them that, congratulations, Jan, you are officially good enough to write!
The whole point of newsletters is to democratize who gets a voice.
Not gate keep it.
I'm saying this because I keep hearing these tiny little voices tiptoe up into my inbox, and they say things that crush my f*cking soul. They say things like, "Would this be a good enough idea, or is this complete shite?" and "I'm not an expert, I don't know as much as these other chumps" and "Do you suppose they'd take me seriously??? Or should I tone myself down???"
No, there will be no toning of yourself down, not on my watch.
In fact, I'm gonna encourage you to crank it UP.
You are such an individual, with such a unique point of view, from the billions of moments that you've lived, and the billions more things you've seen, thought, witnessed, experienced, survived, liked, loved, hated, formed opinions about, chose, rejected, accepted, and fought for.
How could you possibly think you have nothing good to say?
Everything you have ever seen, done, experienced, and thought is FASCINATING. It's a memento of the human experience. Every sentence you write helps us shape our understanding of the world. (And, as humans, we're programmed to want that. Keeps us safe. We need all the intel we can get.)
Which means that if you venture out there, with your guts in your hands, and you say to yourself, "Self, I'm gonna learn about this thing that I'm so very curious about," do you know how many other people in the world are curious about that very thing, too??? Do you know how many other people in the world would love to follow along, and learn in real-time as you do??? Do you know how many other people would love to read your newsletter—not as an expert, but precisely because you are not???
Mistakes make things FUN.
Learning in real-time makes things FUN.
Not being a pretentious, wrinkled old jockstrap makes things FUN.
The #1 thing you can do to mess up your shot in life, is waiting until "you know enough."
There's no such thing as an expert, after all: only people that show up, over and over again, and show their work in public, and do the labor in public—and because they're so damn committed to talking about something so obsessively???
You label them one.
Want my help staying accountable this year to your writing—without copping out like a chicken sh*t (complete with Berenstain Bears footy pajamas)?
Sign up for Dead Voice Club now, with preferred pricing available through Tuesday.
You'll also get a personal email from me, so you can tell me all about what's going on in your world—and your writing!
Plus, don't miss: Tomorrow (Thursday), we have our live weekly meeting at 11AM ET, if you want to come hang with me on camera and ask questions (or just creep!), and a silent co-writing session afterward, from 11:30AM ET - 12:30PM ET, so you can build it into your calendar to ~get it done~.
Plus, of course, a whole library of writing classes with me with one goal: get you writing like a human, and making money doing it.
C'mon. Let's go. It's time to pull the trigger. Start before "you have something good to say."
Because guess what?
YOU DO.
And, I'm gonna get it out of you.
