The Enemy Within and the Art of Fighting for Your Life

“Like Clockwork” by Michele Bledsoe

 

A couple of years ago, I experienced a home invasion.

I was alone when a man kicked in the back door and entered our house.

To make a long story short..

As we confronted each other in the middle of my living room

I did not feel fear – I felt anger.

And in that moment of fight or flight.. I chose to fight.

Eventually, we ended up in the laundry room where I tried to chop his face off with a pair of branch loppers.

He managed to stumble outside, shouted “Sorry, wrong house!” and ran for his life.

When I started working on The Secret Kingdom, I faced an even greater enemy…

Myself.

Not a physical fight, but an intensely psychological one.

This enemy had powerful weapons: Self-doubt. Procrastination. An arsenal of laziness, distraction and fear.

What was at stake was not the death of my physical body, but the death of fulfilling my life’s work. The loss of my creative life.

Every day I worked on my book was a fight to the death.

The day The Secret Kingdom was published, I realized that I had won… for now.

Truthfully, the fight never ends.

In The War of Art Steven Pressfield writes: “Fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.”

This is so true.

Now I am fighting for the life of my second book.

Having lost before, it seems the enemy within has stepped up her game.

I am ready.