2. Charli West: Writing Through Your Resistance Brain

Starting (Is The Hardest Part)

One of the biggest obstacles to starting this podcast was overcoming the fear that what I made wouldn't live up to the final product that I had envisioned. There's this Ira Glass quote that articulates it well:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Often when I go into a project knowing that it will take time to develop my skills and learn how to make my vision a reality, I feel a strong sense of resistance. A feeling that leads me to postpone, delay or try to convince myself that I don't really care. But more often than not, I really care. I've found that the more resistance I feel, the more important it truly is to me. But why? And how do we navigate this? That is just one of the few things that I talk about this month on Starting is The Hardest Part. In the second episode of Starting is The Hardest Part, I interview Charli West, a literature student, writer and the deputy editor of The Stag (The University of Surrey’s Student Magazine). We talk about resistance brain, writing poetry, university and Wattpad. I absolutely loved recording this and putting it all together and I hope you do too!

Episode Survey: startingisthehardestpart.typeform.com/to/m IJQ0o

Mentioned in this episode

Your Resistance Brain Stops You From Being Awesome: https://medium.com/personal-growth/your-resistance-brain-stops-you-from-being-awesome-and-how-to-fight-back-3a5ec87b9a5d

Savannah Brown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsnJS6dmF5I&list=PLG2zhPao4bhjXd0AZ9Co8nRLmZy91Na42

Wattpad (BE WARNED, this site has SUCH a variety of content, not all of it great or SFW sooo use your own discretion): https://wattpad.com Charli’s Poetry: https://inkdries.wordpress.com/category/writing/poetry/

Charli

Twitter: https://twitter.com/shuutupcharli

Poetry: https://inkdr