In the deep quiet of late Saturday afternoon, I've been trying to bring some words, some ideas, an entire book "home."

No one is making me write the book but me, myself.

I've wanted to write one for years. When our daughter was in high school, I used to say I’d have one written before she finished college. She’s been out, oh, almost two years by now.

So finally, after talking about it for more years than I'd like to recall, I'm finally doing it.

To be fair, though (to myself), I have been quietly chipping away at this idea by meeting various learning goals I set for myself, along with learning through various experiments for five years or more, leading up to this point. I've written first drafts of novels through NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month each of the past five Novembers. I've read many, many books on fiction and non-fiction writing, both. I've written in some way almost every day for about three years, along with everything else going on. I've attended conferences, trade shows. And there's more.

So this goal of writing my first book? It's not exactly a fly-by-night idea I'm trying.

But now, to actually get across the finish line – as is the case for anyone in pursuit of a big goal – it has been essential that I usher the self-critic out the door.

Otherwise? I'll never be able to move into the middle of the project, far down the road from the start/restart cycle that happens if immediate and eternal perfection is the primary goal.

Things can be pretty messy on the way to the top of the mountain, or the journey to reach your own star.

Messy. And at times, quite discouraging, when you turn the corner and instead of a clear road, see nothing but boulders and barriers and no end of peaks and valleys about which you wish you’d known.

But if you had, would you have started, at all? Perhaps, perhaps not. It’s better not to know absolutely everything at the start.

So somewhere down the road, when you have your work rhythm and environment right, it can all become wonderful. On the road.

Long before you reach your goal.

Do you know that feeling, too? That flow of all-engaging work, unfettered, moving you energetically, inexorably toward your goal.

That’s not to say that there aren’t and won’t be more messy parts down the road, discouraging parts beyond the peak of wonderfulness now. But once you’ve experienced that work flow, you want more.

The movement that happens naturally when there's no one barring the door, worried that a comma might go out "wrong"? (There’s time, and there will be a need, for that critic to do her job later, when we get to the polishing part).

There is a natural lightness and a light naturalness that can only get into your work when you get out of your own way, and let the work flow.

The goal-reaching, star-grabbing? That's a bonus.

And with that, it’s back to work here.