To Stop Waiting for Permission to Begin

Introducing Wide Open... the Gear Girls album about the moment you stop asking if you're ready

Nobody Is Coming With the Green Light

Let me ask you something.

What are you waiting for?

Not in a motivational-poster kind of way. I mean actually...what is the specific thing?

Because most writers I’ve talked to…and I’ve talked to a lot of them…aren’t waiting for talent.

They already have that.
They’re not waiting for time.
They could find twenty minutes if they really had to.
They’re waiting for permission.

Permission to call themselves a writer.
Permission to publish before they’re “ready.”
Permission to take up space in a genre that already has people in it who seem more qualified, more polished, more...whatever the thing is they think they’re not yet.

I keep asking myself…WHY?

Nobody is coming with that permission.

There is no committee.

There is no moment when the world looks at you and says, “Yes. Now. You may proceed.”

Back in 2000, I was waiting for my ‘big break’ to become a comic book creator with Marvel, or DC, or Image comics. I’d submitted my work and got very polite rejections, and yet something in me said, “But I’m SUPPOSED to do this!”

They ‘had’ to notice me…or I would never have the opportunity to become a comic book creator.

…or so I thought.

That’s when my dad,…my real life hero, came to me in 2004 and said, “You know son, there’s this amazing thing called the internet, and I think it’s here to stay. Through it, you’d have access to the whole world over time, so why not do your Wanted Hero comic book solo?”

That’s when it clicked.

WHY was I waiting?

The Thing About the Door

I spent years working up to things.

Almost published.
Almost launched.
Almost finished.
Almost started.

I had reasons.

Good ones…or at least I THOUGHT they we good ones.

The world was genuinely hard and the timing genuinely wasn’t right and there were genuinely other things I had to handle first.

Some of that was real.

But some of it... some of it was just the comfortable feeling of almost. Almost means you’re still in the game without actually having to play. Almost means you can’t fail yet. Almost is a place you can live for a long time if you’re not careful.

The door was there the whole time.

I kept walking past it.

Not because I didn’t see it. Because stepping through it meant I couldn’t blame the door anymore.

What “Ready” Actually Means

Here’s the thing about waiting until you’re ready.

Ready is not a destination.

It’s a story you tell yourself to explain why today isn’t the day.

I know writers who have been getting ready for eleven years.

Beautiful outlines.
Detailed world maps.
Character sheets with backstories going back four generations.

Everything in place.
Everything except the actual writing.

Because the actual writing is where the permission thing gets real. You can prepare in private. But writing... publishing... putting the thing into the world... that requires you to decide you’re allowed to.

Nope. Let me put that differently.

It requires you to decide you don’t need to be allowed.

That’s the shift.

Not confidence…you don’t need to feel confident.

Not certainty…the uncertainty never fully goes away.

Just the decision that you are going to begin without waiting for the signal that was never coming anyway.

I have a good friend…brilliant writer with solid talent…who finally got fed up with waiting on the ‘right’ time or the ‘right’ opportunity to complete a novel. In fact, he got so sick of trying to find an agent and waiting on some ‘professional’ gatekeeper to tell him what to do, he didn’t complete a book…he wrote a trilogy.

The only thing he regretted, was waiting so long to get his writing butt in gear.

The Cost of Waiting

Every day you wait has a price tag. Most people don’t look at it.

The story you don’t write this year doesn’t just...wait around for you.

It changes.

You change.

The version of that story you could tell today is different from the one you’ll tell in three years…and not always in the direction you’d hope.

Some stories need to be told when the wound is fresh. Some characters only speak when you’re in the right season of your own life to hear them. The waiting doesn’t preserve the material.

Sometimes it just lets it go stale.

And the readers... the ones who would have found something in your work... they’re out there right now reading something else. Not because your thing isn’t worth finding. Because you haven’t put it where they can find it.

That’s not a guilt trip. That’s just math.

What Beginning Actually Looks Like

It’s not dramatic.

No one writes a first chapter and hears trumpets. You sit down, you open the document, and you write a sentence. Probably a bad one.

That’s fine.

Bad first sentences have launched more good books than any amount of waiting ever did.

The beginning doesn’t feel like a beginning while it’s happening.

It feels like Tuesday.
It feels like thirty minutes you carved out while the coffee was still hot.
It feels like uncertainty and a blinking cursor and the distinct possibility that this might not work.

Do it anyway.

Because here is the only thing I know for certain after however many years of doing this:

The writers who have work in the world are not the ones who waited until they were sure. They’re the ones who started before they were.

What the hell are you waiting for?

I’m saying that because you NEED to hear this!

No one has to give you permission to write, to finish, to publish, to share with readers around the whole flippin’ world!

YOU get to decide.
YOU get to choose how and where and when you create, from start to finish.

That also means the ONLY one holding you back…is you.

In the end, when you look in the mirror with regret, you’ll only have yourself to blame.

The Only Permission That Was Ever Real

You want to know where that permission comes from?

You.

It was always you. The whole time, the only signature that ever mattered on the green light was yours.

Nobody can give you what you won’t give yourself. And nobody can take it from you once you do.

So here’s what I want you to do.

Not tomorrow.
Today, before you close this tab.

Write one sentence.

Doesn’t matter if it’s good.
Doesn’t matter if it’s the beginning or the middle or a scene you’re not sure belongs anywhere yet. One sentence, in the document, today.

That’s the beginning.
That’s what it looks like.

...and once you start, you might be surprised how hard it is to stop.

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This is one piece of a larger content bridge built around the Gear Girls album Wide Open. The song “Wide Open” explores the same theme…the moment you stop waiting for a door to be opened and realize you’ve been standing next to the handle the whole time.

Have a listen: WIDE OPEN