Writing is tough. Sometimes it’s discouraging. I made a zine with some helpful reminders for when writing makes me want to punch a hole in the wall.
Advice from Ray Bradbury. Good reminder to trust in the process. Showing up and writing is the win. The X’d out boxes refer to the 30-day Challenges that I complete every month.
This line came from James Clear’s 3-2-1 Thursday newsletter. It reminds me that we can’t rely on the muse. We have to show up and keep going.
A quote pulled from Chuck Palahniuk’s Substack. If writing something worthwhile were easy, no one would bother.
I have a framed print on my wall above my writing desk with this quote on it.
The beginning of writing something can intimidate any writer. You want to convey your ideas in the best way possible. An admirable goal, one worthy of pursuit, but an idea that could leave you paralyzed by the threat of imperfection.
So you stare at a blank page. All words fail you. The words that do appear in your mind, they’re all inadequate. You stare some more and pray for inspiration.
There’s an easy way out.
Just write some shit.
It’s OK to write shit.
Get it down. Get something down. You can’t edit a blank page. Lower the stakes and start writing, whatever comes.
Problems arise when we attach too much importance to what we write. Get over yourself.
You can, and should, edit later. Cross out words and change others. Move some around. Maybe even toss everything out.
Lighten up. Let loose some words.
That might get you unclogged. If a bad sentence is in your head, it’s tough to discard it. So write it down. Give your brain permission to dump it. Scratch it out later. You can write more and move beyond it.
You have to write down what you’re going to abandon.
-Leonard Cohen
You have permission to write some shit.
In order to get to the good stuff, often we have to wade through the bad stuff.
No great writing came out fully formed, as is, flowing effortlessly from mind to pen, untouched by edits later. Writing is revising.
Write some shit you can revise.