David O'Mahony: Be the inaction hero of your own story

The Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. The Roman emperor wrote: ‘The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.’

"You can edit a bad book, but you can't edit a blank page."

That's probably the equivalent of "feel the fear and do it anyway" for a writer. It's not far off the advice I got when I was working on my doctorate, when I was, like most other students and academics, stuck in a loop of "I just need to read one more article and then I can start writing the chapter".