Dennis Palumbo, in the 2007 Writer Manual, says, "There is a myth out there that if you take the right seminar, read the right books, get the right coach, have the right friends or contacts, then you’ll be successful. That the person you are right now just isn’t enough.
It’s a classical belief system. You feel you have to be something more to succeed—smarter, better educated, funnier—with more interesting lives, unique experiences. More something.
"As a therapist who works with writers I see this everyday. Writers who believe all the other writers are more talented, more confident, less burdened by doubt.”
In the opening sequence of Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, the glum Woody sits in a dark dingy train car with a handful of depressed and sour-faced killjoys. He sees another train car—shining, brightly lit. Inside beautiful men and women laugh, drink and enjoy the life of privilege. A girl laughs at him and blows a kiss his way. Woody despairs. Why isn’t he in the sparkling car with sparkling people.
Have you ever looked around and wondered how you got stuck where you did? Or wondered why you didn't have it as easy as the other guy?
We can look at our own story like the train on Stardust Memories and feel paralyzed by our own inadequacies. Unmotivated. Passionless. But often something more insidious and undermining occurs—the idea that I believe I was dealt a bad hand because of intrinsic defects in me. “I’m in the wrong car.” If life had dealt me a better hand—more talent, brighter personality, quicker wit—I would be in the right car. Those people are in that car because they deserve to be in it. I am inadequate therefore I don’t deserve to be in that car.
Paul addressed this issue with an entire epistle to the Ephesians and another one to the Colossians. At one point he says, “In Jesus Christ dwells all the nature of God in bodily form and you are complete in him.” You don’t need more to be more. You have all you need right now. You are complete in Him.
You—with all your doubts and fears, joys and sorrows—are enough. You the one hearing these words at this very moment have everything you need to write the epic of your life.
For my the other two comsic rules for writing the epic of your life go to my sermon on The Epic of Me.
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