For the past five months I have been making lists of focus thoughts on my becoming an author, my overcoming fear of writing my first novel, and my commitment to write everyday and honor my self-imposed deadlines.
My list consisted of thoughts like:
I am committed to getting this done no matter what
This book will be a best-seller
Writing is easy for me
I look forward to write everyday

Then few nights ago I was at a friend’s party and one of her guests was a published and well-known author.
Towards the end of the evening I dared approaching her and asked her what is she thinking as a successful author who has to meet the blank page everyday, and I was surprised by how her thoughts were totally different from what I had in mind about what someone like her thinks. She said things like:

It’s really just my job, there is nothing magical or mysterious about writing.
I just decide on a single story at a time and I follow it.
I’m not trying to write best-sellers, I only try to tell the best story I can tell as the writer that I am at the time.
If there was another job I’d rather do I won’t be doing writing.
I don’t have vocabulary of committed, determined, honoring my deadlines. It’s just the only way I put food on my table so I don’t have the luxury of not writing.

And then after I shared with her some of my focus thoughts that I read regularly to cause me to write, she said they all have an underlying fear, which is why I demand of myself to be so verbally assertive with them.

It kind of confused me all together about my focus thoughts.