But Everything is so SHINY: Episode 319, Coaching journalist Alison Myers on restarting a writing career.

It&#8217;s hard to start. It&#8217;s hard to finish. It&#8217;s hard to choose. Sometimes writers (especially those who have had to step back from a professional journalism job for family or other reasons) have all the ideas and in some sense, all the time to execute them, and the result isn&#8217;t wild productivity, but a frustrating spinning of wheels&#8212;because if everything is possible, how do you choose? What if you choose wrong? Everything looks like a shiny opportunity, but when you write the first few sentences, it turns out the shiny thing was just a gum wrapper.<br/><br/>It blows, and it can go on for a long time (and even forever)&#8212;because when you&#8217;re used to externally imposed topic and deadlines, it&#8217;s hard to shift into creating your own&#8212;and putting in the time you need to finish them and turn them into something real. KJ talks to former CBC national reporter and occasional freelancer Alison Myers about harnessing your strengths and the way you work best to get things done instead of starting and stopping a million things. Here&#8217;s what Alison said in her email: <br/><br/><em>Hello from Canada, the country that used to be known for being polite and apologetic but more recently seems to be inspiring people around the world to be horn-honking jerks.&#160;</em><br/><br/><em>You have no idea how relieved I was to hear you both talk about writing for an audience on a recent show. I used to be a big deal radio reporter before I had kids so I&#8217;m used to writing and performing for the sake of other people (i.e., feedback). I always stacked it up to what must be the raging dissatisfaction of my massive ego, that evil thing I'm supposed to suppress. As clich&#233; as this sounds, you guys made me feel like less of an a*****e for wanting people to read my words.&#160;</em><br/><br/><em>I have ideas coming out the wazoo and can write well when I commit to it. My problem is it has no purpose (read: audience). I have 52 untitled documents open with half-written essays that I hav