To guarantee success, act as if it were impossible to fail.
I’ve been busy taking a lot of writing courses on Masterclass. If you’ve not taken any on here, it is a great platform and the teachers (experts in their craft) are wonderful to listen to and watch. There is one underlying theme common across all the writers I’ve been watching—write. No excuses, no worrying about whether it is good or bad, just write.
My favorite so far has been Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale. She said that the wastebasket is your friend and God made it just for you. Her point is that if you can’t work it out, trash it and start with another idea. The same goes with your initial draft. You can revise it. So, no excuses—WRITE!!
It is liberating to keep the mindset that you cannot fail. You really can’t fail when it comes down to it. Even the exceptional writers have been rejected by publishers, or written books that won’t ever be seen by the public. They keep writing because this is what they do.
I’ve also begun to get the idea that writing on paper is probably the best way to create. There are no distractions, you can get your ideas down on paper without the temptation to auto-correct or edit what you are doing, and you can get the first draft done! James Patterson, another author who offers a class on Masterclass, said to drive through the first draft like a freight train. Like Atwood, he made it clear that the rewriting will also occur. Get the story out of your head and onto paper. Then the real work can begin.
Keep this quote in the back of your mind as you tackle that next challenge. You’ll be more motivated when you realize that the project is not complete until you say it is.
Have a great week, everyone!
Until next time…
Dave
