So, as I approach my 500th consecutive daily post, today the magical secret of how to write.
How to write?
Stop not writing.
Thanks to Anne Lamott on Twitter for this ultimate in concise wisdom.
She goes on to say:
How to write: Stop not writing. Get and keep your butt in chair. Write really bad small sections of the whole—passages, moments, episodes, memories—til you have an incredibly shitty 1st draft. Then take out the boring parts, the lies and pretensions. Then write a better 2nd draft
— ANNE LAMOTT (@ANNELAMOTT) December 9, 2018
Anne’s advice is around writing a longer work such as a book. For me, I am not there yet (though have the first parts of my “shitty first draft” being pulled together for my first book.
For me, though, largely my writing is my daily posts. At an average of about 600 words each, I now have about 300,000 words written on this site.
I have developed certain tools and methods to support me in writing daily, but the simplest one of all is to simply sit down at the laptop and write. To look at the screen, turn my mind towards writing and start writing.
Sometimes I struggle to write one short post in an hour or so, other times I get in an amazing flow and write three or four in a couple of hours.
So, to extend Anne’s lesson of “Stop not writing”. the same can apply to so many areas of work and life.
The easiest way to do something is to stop not doing it.
To paraphrase Nike with an obscenity inserted, “JFDI”.
What can you stop not doing?