My Mantras
The 84 mantras I use to overcome self-doubt.
The other day a friend was complaining about having lost the motivation to finish their novel. Having just finished a novel myself, I wanted to give them some wisdom. I told them I, too, had felt like a fraud throughout the whole process, but I had a secret weapon to combat self-doubt: a powerful system of interlocking mantras. Whenever I was feeling discouraged, I recited my first mantra in order to boost my spirits and allow me to keep on slogging to the end. Then if that mantra wore out, I would simply move on to the next mantra in a chain that was 84 mantras long. The first mantra is one you’ve probably heard before: Fake it ’til you make it. Now just because this mantra is familiar, that doesn’t mean it isn’t incredibly powerful. In fact, I’d argue that its familiarity is proof of its power. Mantras don’t get famous unless they work to some degree. Due to the immense power of this mantra, I told my friend, I was even able to finish my novel without even tapping the other 83 mantras! That’s right, fake it ’til you make it actually sustained me for the entire 20-year period it took me to write my novel. Then when finished, I no longer felt like a fraud because I truly had done the thing I didn’t think I was capable of! Not only that, I hadn’t even tapped the power of my other 83 mantras. I was confidence-rich and mantra-rich and sitting on a bad-ass novel. When I got done talking about how well things had gone for myself, my struggling friend asked if they could use my mantra system to try to get their own confidence going, and I said of course. A few weeks later, though, they reported that after using the first mantra a lot, it had started to feel used up and hollow, like empty language that had lost its effect through overuse. I reminded my friend that that’s what the other 83 mantras were for, and when each one ran out of juice, they could just move onto the next one. Even though I’d only needed fake it ’til you make it to make it through the 20 years it took to write my own novel, there was no reason to expect that the very first mantra would work as good for them. So, here’s the list I gave to them. After sharing the list, I will then tell you how the friend’s novel turned out. I hope this list supplies all the writers who read this blog with some good motivation!
Original mantra that lasted me 20 years:
Fake it ’til you make it.
83 other mantras I never needed to use:
Grind it ’til you find it.
Cheese it ’til you ease it.
Psych it ’til you like it.
See it ’til you be it.
Do it ’til you true it.
Give it ’til you live it.
Pace it ’til you grace it.
Scheme it ’til you meme it.
Lug it ’til you shrug it.
Strain it ’til you gain it.
Pack it ’til you snack it.
Fold it ’til you mold it.
Trick it ’til you stick it.
Flush it ’til you crush it.
Crank it ’til you thank it.
Skunk it ’til you dunk it.
Toast it ’til you ghost it.
Dog it ’til you log it.
Bark it ’til you arc it.
Will it ’til you kill it.
Hoe it ’til you grow it.
Milk it ’til you silk it.
Taunt it ’til you haunt it.
Noob it ’til you cube (e.g., “x³”) it.
Cleat it ’til you eat it.
Fear it ’til you spear it.
Nag it ’til you bag it.
Floss it ’til you boss it.
Waste it ’til you taste it.
Bite it ’til you kite it.
Dread it ’til you shred it.
Whip it ’til you flip it.
Type it ’til you snipe it.
Tilt it ’til you built it.
Strife it ’til you life it.
Pain it ’til you reign it.
Wear it ’til you bear it.
Howl it ’til you owl it.
Weave it ’til you heave it.
Reave it ’til you leave it.
Ruse it ’til you fuse it.
Shrimp it ’til you blimp it.
Fuck it ’til you luck it.
Shit it ’til you get it.
Piss it ’til you kiss it.
Honk it ’til you tonk it.
Joke it ’til you choke it.
Loot it ’til you root it.
Hold it ’til you gold it.
Trash it ’til you cash it.
Bleed it ’til you seed it.
Fish it ’til you wish it.
Inch it ’til you Grinch it.
Cramp it ’til you champ it.
Cloak it ’til you oak it.
Drill it ’til you fill it.
Feel it ’til you heal it.
Fear it ’til you hear it
Endure it ’til you cure it.
Trope it ’til you rope it.
Ain’t it ’til you paint it.
Game it ’til you flame it.
Mold it ’til you sold it.
Grunt it ’til you bunt it.
Lag it ’til you swag it.
None it ’til you done it.
Count it ’til you mount it.
Wince it ’til you since it.
Thirst it ’til you first it.
Wrench it ’til you quench it.
Nope it ’til you dope it.
No it ’til you glow it.
Nay it ’til you weigh it.
Seek it ’til you freak it.
Probe it ’til you globe it.
Pig it ’til you big it.
Shrill it ’til you quill it.
Hell it ’til you quell it.
Brave it ’til you grave it.
Hiss it ’til you miss it.
Sift it ’til you lift it.
Sieve it ’til you grieve it.
Of it ’til you love it.
If you too are struggling to find motivation to finish your novel, feel free to use any or all of these mantras. Hopefully they will give you a little espresso shot of inspo to keep you staggering forward when so-called “common sense” keeps yelling at you to sit down and give up.
As for my friend, after many more months, I did hear from them again. They said they had finished their novel! I was overjoyed for them and asked them which mantras they used. They said they had used them all, switching from mantra to mantra as needed. Each mantra, my friend said, was like a different prescription drug that when self-prescribed allowed them to get a “healthy” amount of confidence to complete the task. Now they are going to start querying agents, and I told them I would try to write more mantras to help them because getting published is even more difficult than finishing a book, and unlike writing a book, it’s not remotely fun. Luckily, these mantras still apply to all aspects of publishing, and even to most aspects of life, so hopefully my friend can reuse them for the road ahead. It’s just so beautiful that when life gives us challenges, all we need are the right words to unlock a cauldron of hope. And even more beautiful is that words are free. Have you ever thought about how words are basically a form of magic that anyone can use, and without them nothing would ever happen? If you think about history like that, try to name one actual historical event that didn’t have some combination of words as its cause. It’s hard for me to think of even one. And did those historical actors pay to use those words? No, they were free, just as words have always been since human consciousness awoke. In this way, even the most important historical events are “free” to initiate. It just takes the right words, grabbing them out of thin air, and arranging them in a way that unlocks the minds of others. Try to think of your novel as the right words to unlock a historical event that will change humanity forever for the better, if you need more motivation than even these 84 mantras can provide.