Write Now, Think Later!
This weekend provided me with some much needed free time to relax after a rather hectic week at work. Although I didn’t feel particularly inspired, I managed to get several more pages written on a short story I have kept putting off for several months now. If I had gone much longer without writing anything, the story risked being lost forever and would probably end up in some dusty file in the back of my filing cabinet.
That didn’t happen. I managed to sit down and write! Like I said, I didn’t feel all that inspired. But I wrote anyway and I probably wrote more than if I had felt inspired. Then, last night I read over some of my latest additions to the story, and they weren’t all that bad.
I like to compare inspiration to that one friend everybody has, the one you can’t count on for anything. And every once in a great while, this friend finally comes through and really gets you all revved up and excited, only to abandon you once again for an undetermined amount of time. Inspiration is the same way. It makes an appearance just enough to lull you into thinking you can depend on it, but it rarely pulls through when you want it to.
That’s why I always tell people never to wait for inspiration, because if you do, you will never get any writing done. Just sit down and start writing! Don’t worry about if your work is any good. Don’t worry about getting that sentence perfect. Just get the words onto paper (or screen)and worry about all those little details later.
By doing this, you’ll not only be much more productive, but you’ll find that your writing doesn’t vary much in quality from those times when you feel inspired, and those times when you don’t. In fact, I would even argue that when you just write, your writing is more spontaneous and feels less "contrived" because it’s flowing out of you in a more spontaneous fashion.
Does this mean you should ignore all those little bouts of inspiration every writer gets? Of course not. Think of inspiration like little bonuses and take advantage of them when they come along. But don’t become dependent on them. Train yourself to write now, and worry about all the work of editing and revising later!
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- Don’t wait for inspiration – just write!
- 5 Reasons Why I Write
- Learning to write is easy, creativity is not!
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- Never too late to start writing!
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