I have been doing Lisa Sonora’s 30-Day Journal Project.

I just finished day #7.

Since the journal project is asynchronous, I am not doing it in 30 days, but spreading it out for as long as I want to.

I do a prompt whenever I feel the need to be introspective because, for me, this is what journaling is all about.

Each challenge has a short message and quote related to that day’s theme, and three – or more – prompts to choose from.

Day #7 is about being quietly courageous.

Although none of the prompts offered for this day spoke to me, I wrote.

Here is a snippet: …in addition to the quiet voice encouraging me to be courageous, there’s the other voice telling me the opposite.

The constant voice of doubt and the occasional whisper to keep going are not unfamiliar to me.

And, just as familiar, is the power of writing to help me uncover and discover what is hiding beneath the surface of my thoughts and emotions.

So, as I wrote in response to the provocation for day #7, I realized that being quietly courageous isn’t a moment in time; here today and gone tomorrow. For me, being quietly courageous is an ongoing way to face the fears that hold me back from realizing my full potential.

One way I can be quietly courageous is when I sit down to plan and write my book.

The book that I’ve been wanting to write for a very long time.

The book that is about everything and so ends up being about nothing.

The book that will be a book even if it doesn’t ever get published or no one, except me, ever reads it.

The book that needs to be distilled to its essence before any words ever see the light of day.

So, in the process of thinking about what it means for me to be quietly courageous, I realized that something that is holding me back is the cacophony of ideas in my head. All competing for equal attention and I don’t know where to focus.

So, I need to be quietly courageous and sort out all the voices in my head about all of the things I could write about and brainstorm ideas and then see if there’s a common thread that weaves through all of them that would make for a book. A coherent book. A book that makes sense from beginning to end. A book that I could be proud of.

This I’ve never tried before.

Now, to those of you that have written a book, or books, this may seem like common sense and not earth shattering.

But to me, it is earth shattering.

I’m making my plan public so that I hold myself accountable to making it happen:

(1) Brainstorm topics for professional writing.

(2) Find commonalities – common threads – among the topics. What themes emerge from this process?

(3) Start writing.

(4) Write every day.

(5) Write some more.

(6) Repeat.

This is me being quietly courageous.

Cross posted to The Two Writing Teachers Tuesday Slice of Life Challenge Story.