Don’t Believe You Can Finish Your Novel?

It doesn’t matter. Just keep writing.

Photo by Ran Berkovich on Unsplash

For Christmas three years ago my mom bought me a mug that says “IF YOU CAN DREAM IT, YOU CAN DO IT” in classic Disney typeface. It was meant to be encouragement for the upcoming marathon, my first, that I’d been training for over the past six months. It was the Disney marathon, so the mug was on point. Go Mom.

I drank my morning cup out of that mug every day leading up to the race. I dreamed it and I was going to do it, damn it. And I did.

Now that I’ve been working on my first draft of my first novel for close to two years, that mug’s in the wayback of my cabinet. I don’t instinctively reach for it anymore. It makes me feel glum.

I dreamed it, Walt. So why am I not able to do it?

After bellyaching about this to a dear friend for what was probably the 17th time, she told me what was missing. She told me I need to believe I can do it.

Believe I can do it? What’s that have to do with it?

Turns out my friend is in good company, because while Walt Disney had a lot to say about dreaming, he had just as much to say about believing.

“First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dare.”
— Walt Disney

I started watching the documentary The Imagineering Story on Disney+ this weekend, which chronicles the history of Disney’s theme parks. I was astounded at how many obstacles Disney overcame as he brought Disneyland to life.

Man, could than man dream. But even more impressive was how much he believed he could do what he was attempting to do.

It’s almost as if Disney was sustained by belief and dreams the way mere mortals are sustained by water and oxygen. Dreams and belief were what kept him alive. Literally. The man borrowed money from his life insurance policy to fund the construction of Disneyland. That’s honest-to-goodness belief in your dreams right there.

“When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestioningly.”
— Walt Disney

Dreaming has never been a problem for me. And, until recently, neither has believing. Not once during my marathon training did I consider the possibility that I might not cross the finish line on race day. I didn’t need to pump myself up with Disney quotes about believing in myself. I just did. Implicitly. Unquestioningly.

But something about writing a novel is causing the belief-center of my brain to short-circuit. When my friend told me I need to believe I can do it, I replied, rather unsarcastically, “yeah, but how do you go about believing something you don’t believe?”

I wasn’t joking when I said it, but I was being a tad bit dramatic.

Sometimes I do believe I’ll finish this book. Sometimes I feel my belief expanding inside my chest like a bubble of soap on my kid’s plastic bubble wand thing. I feel the belief growing larger and larger, pumping me so full of excitement and contentment and happiness and warmth and then POP. It’s gone. Like it never existed.

When that bubble’s inside my chest, I think I’m feeling Disney-level belief. And it feels so, so good.

I want to believe like that every time my alarm goes off at 4:55 am. I’m dying to believe like that each time I sit at my computer, feeling my ass expand because I’m writing instead of running. But, for some reason, if I don’t have my Disney-level belief filling my chest, I don’t have any belief. At all.

Am I doomed?

Walt says my belief should be implicit and unquestioning, but on most days my belief is nonexistent. I can’t seem to summon it. It’s like this delicate, soapy, slippery thing that I either have or I don’t have from one moment to the next. Belief is like the muse, but flightier.

When I asked my writing group if my novel was doomed, one of the writers said the most obvious, profound thing in response. It was exactly what I needed to hear.

She didn’t tell me I need to believe in myself. She didn’t tell me to try harder to summon my belief. She didn’t tell me to do affirmations or mantras or to get a new mug with a new quote. This is what she told me: Do it whether you believe it or not.

A weight lifted from my shoulders when I thought about it.

Do it whether you believe it or not.

If I don’t have to believe I can do it, that’s one less thing to do. I realized I was putting additional pressure on myself to believe. My continued failure to believe was adding an invisible layer of stress to the already emotionally complex venture that is novel-writing.

I’m not ignoring the importance of self-belief. Believing I will finish this book, all day, every day, would make the process of writing it a lot more enjoyable. But until I can figure out how to capture that Disney-level belief bubble in my chest, I’m going to try something different.

I’m going to approach the page with a new intention. I’m going to keep on doing the damn thing, word after word, day after day, and I’m going to keep doing it whether I believe I’ll finish it or not. Doing this, there can be only one result.

Believe it or not.

I will finish.