The plan was for my novel re-write to be done by the end of June.

It wasn’t.

The new plan was to finish before I left on vacation this past Monday.

I didn’t.

To be fair, this draft was many more words than I anticipated; the original 88,000 turned into 116,000. (I’m not quite sure how that happened. I guess I’ll find out during editing.) But with my newly improved method for higher daily word counts, I still should have finished at least by early July. I had about 9,000 words left when I got sick with bronchitis.

And that was when the excuses began.

I was sick. I needed to rest. I couldn’t focus.

Yet I still managed to read several books. I just wasn’t writing my own.

The truth was, I got cold feet. I could see the finish line, and I knew what my next step would be: attempting, once again, to get this book published. And suddenly, I didn’t feel up for it. Suddenly, I was worried it wouldn’t be good enough. That after months and months of work, it would get rejected. Again. Which means I would feel rejected. Again. Except this time, it would be worse, because I’d put in even more time, used up seven precious months of mornings and lunchtimes to write it all over again.

What if I’d made the wrong decision? What if I’d chosen to scrap this first novel of mine and write a new one instead? I’d have a full fresh draft by now. A shiny new chance to get the interest of agents and publishers. I hadn’t done that. I’d chosen to stick with this first novel, because I really believed in it.

In short, I was terrified. And it stalled my writing, so I didn’t finish when I’d planned.

On Saturday, I was in dire straits, several thousand words behind where I wanted to be. I hadn’t written at all in two days. That day, I brought my son to lunch with my best friend and her husband. They asked me how my writing was going, and I gave them all the excuses: I was sick, I couldn’t focus, I was scared.

And then my not-quite-three year old son, who’d seemed completely absorbed in his grilled cheese up to that point, looked up at me and said this:

“Mommy, JUST DO IT!”

Out of the mouths of babes, right? We all laughed, but I was in shock. My little boy had understood the situation much better than I had, and delivered the shortest and best piece of advice I’d ever received.

So I listened to him. When I got home that evening, I wrote a little. On Sunday morning, I wrote a little more. I wrote on Monday before we left for vacation. I wrote that evening after we arrived, and I spent every spare minute on Tuesday, the first full day of our trip, writing furiously. I finished on Wednesday morning, just a few days shy of my goal.

JUST DO IT got me over my fear. It reminded me that I still believed in this novel, and in myself as a writer. It reminded me that all I had to do was sit down and get the work done. No excuses, no self-doubt. Just do it.

(In case you missed that brief but monumental word, finished, I want to make it clear that I finally, finally completed my novel re-write! Time to celebrate! And then email some agents.)

How about you? What can “JUST DO IT” do for you today?