I chose this excerpt because it speaks volumes about commitment, a condition that is tough for most humans. I especially like the part on page 78 about the "shuttered lantern." It's not just writers who have problems making a commitment. In my work as a therapist, I watch people struggle every day in fear of making a change. Sometimes they try to cover all the bases before they change (impossible). Other times they rationalize that change isn't all it's cracked up to be (ridiculous, as change is what keeps us alive and kicking). Most often, they avoid change at all costs (sad, because change is the precursor to great joy). My husband said that this book is the best therapy book he ever read. Sure he's biased, but read the book and see if you don't feel inspired to take some risks and find out more about the person you could really be. There is much more information about our book on Nancy Pickard's website.  

Seven Steps on the Writer's Path

Learn as You Go

For many authors, the art of writing is something they learn as they go, and they may publish many books before they ever feel confident about their skills. In spite of those insecurities, they commit to writing again and again in much the same way Jack London chose his boat: "The ketch retains the cruising virtues of the yawl. .. . The foregoing must be taken with a grain of salt. It is all theory in my head. I've never sailed a ketch, nor even seen one. .. . Wait til I get out on the ocean, then I'll be able to tell more about the cruising and sailing qualities of the ketch." .

Can you believe that? He took off on the deep blue sea in a kind of boat he'd never even been on, much less ever sailed! He sort of had an itinerary. He kind of knew how long he'd be gone. But he so wanted to do this crazy thing that he made the commitment. He was willing to cast off and to learn as he went, even if he died trying: "Neither Roscoe nor I knows anything about navigation, and the summer is gone, and we are about to start, and the problems are thicker than ever, and the treasury is stuffed with emptiness. Well, anyway, it takes years to learn seamanship, and both of us are seamen. If we don't find the time, we'll lay in the books and instruments and teach ourselves navigation on the ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii."

Amazing. And so similar to how many writers get started:
"I don't know anything about publishing," they might say, "and my checking account is stuffed with emptiness. Well, anyway, it takes years to become a good novelist. I'll lay in books and notepads and teach myself how to write during my coffee breaks."

That's what Don Coldsmith did. He is a full-time Western writer now with many books to his credit-but once he was a doctor who sat and wrote in the hallways of the Emporia, Kansas hospital where he practiced medicine. One of the nurses remembers it well. "I remember seeing Don in between operations," she told Nancy. "There he’d be in his hospital greens, just sitting in the corridor, writing in a notebook."

Scott Turow wrote his first book on the commuter trains of Chicago as he traveled to and from his law office. Both of those men committed to what, they hardly knew--and then they set sail, learning in the process of doing.

Jack London pulled it off and lived to write The Cruise of the Snark. Lynn and her family pulled it off, and she lived to tell us about it. By making such a huge commitment and following through with it completely, Lynn gave herself a lot of insights, as every committed adventurer and writer does. The first of her insights was about time. "Pretrip, I lived on a treadmill," she says. "I got up each morning, hopped on the treadmill, ran as fast as I could, and fell into bed exhausted each night. It never occurred to me there was any other way to do it.

"But time took on a new meaning on the trip. There was a rhythm to travel that I had never experienced before. I soon realized that if I didn't enjoy the moment 1 was in, it would be miles behind me before long, and I'd never have the same experience or opportunity again. So I learned to live in the present and appreciate it for what it had to offer. That may sound simplistic to people who already know that, but I had never realized before the trip just how much of my time I spent thinking about the past or planning for the future and missing the moments in front of my nose.”

Her second big aha was that she had one life to live—or at least, she'd only live this life once—and that she was in charge of it.

"I know that probably sounds elementary to a lot of people," she says, "but it was a dramatic revelation for me at the time. I finally got it, that if I wasted time, I'd never have it again. 1 needed to get clear on what my goals and priorities were so I could structure my life to meet them instead of merely react to life as. it came my way. Because I made that dramatic commitment, I learned that I was in charge of my life."

The Shuttered Lantern

Now, when she thinks of the word commitment, Lynn pictures a shuttered lantern with light glowing around the edges of the shutters.

"Most people live their whole lives as if they were shuttered lanterns," she says, from the vantage point of her thirty years as a therapist. "They search all their life long to find something else, or somebody else, to light their path for them, not realizing that all the light they'll ever need is there inside themselves. They're scared to lift the shutter, or maybe they don't even know there's a latch to unfasten. And so they stumble along in the dark, trying to find their way with the little bit of their own light that trickles out at the edges or with the reflected light of someone else. That's what it's like to live with the shutters down. That's what it's like to live without committing yourself to something fully and with passion.”

Most of the commitments that writers make are far less dramatic than changing their whole lives. But even the smallest commitment, made wholeheartedly, feels clean, clear, energizing. Commitment feels great, even when there's a part of you that's still scared to death, as is often true for writers who make any of the following commitments to their craft: sending a check to register for a writers conference, sitting down with a timer and writing for a half hour a day, writing five pages, plunking down the credit card to pay for a new laptop, sending out a manuscript to an agent or editor, showing up at a writers group, doing the rewrites, calling an editor. In each of those cases, a realization is followed by a decision and then by an action. And as you do it, it's normal to feel relieved and scared and nervous and dedicated and proud and shaky all at the same time.

Commitments can happen in a flash. One minute, you're blind; the next minute, you can see. It happened just that way to Nancy on the day she made the amazing commitment to leave all of her freelance clients and become a full-time fiction writer, before she'd ever written a novel or sold a single short story.

"It was 1981," Nancy reflected, "and I had been a freelance commercial writer for about eight years and was growing increasingly unhappy with it. One day, I had lunch with a friend. I was complaining to her about how much I hated what I was doing for a living and how all I really wanted to do was write mystery novels for the rest of my life. I'd only ever written about forty pages of one, you understand, but that's how I felt, more passionately than I'd ever felt anything before.

"Out of the blue, my friend blurted, 'You know what's wrong with you? You're just afraid to do it.'

"Afraid? Me? The light bulb over my head switched on. She was right. It was so obvious. It was so true. I was afraid to stop doing what I hated to do, and I was afraid to start doing what I longed to do. I remember a very clear moment then of sitting at the table with her and thinking to myself that I had a choice in this moment, and that it was an important one that could affect the rest of my life. I could choose to fall back into my fears and the status quo, or I could choose to make a commitment to move forward. I thought about what it was like to ski, about how you have to go against all of your instincts and lean down the mountain, even though you feel sure you're going to fall, but that's the only way you'll ever learn to ski. In that moment, I reflected back on my skiing. I realized I had to lean down the mountain of my life, despite my fears, or I'd never make my dreams come true.

" 'I'll do it,' I said to my friend. Just like that. That's literally how fast it happened; that's how the rest of my life began. It was a eureka moment. My whole life changed in an instant, because I had a realization, I made a decision, and I took the action of telling her my intention. There would be a few more actions to come, to nail this step down, but those were for later."

Nancy Pickard and Lynn Lott. New York, NY: Ballantine, 2003.