After teaching college students, coaching professionals, and writing for businesses, I’ve discovered three simple reasons: 

I’ve written other articles focused on the attitude of getting started. I even wrote a whole chapter on the topic in Write Big, called the “Ready, Set, Mindset.” Essentially, you have to stiff arm your internal critic by writing fast so you can make the important discoveries needed to write your project. It’s a trick for getting started not for writing an entire work, so use with caution.

 

In this article, however, I want to talk about what’s underneath the uncertainty of getting started, and I don’t mean your 4th grade teacher’s criticism of your...