And So I Went and Got a Mountain Dew and Stayed Up Through the Night

[melissawyatt]

Every now and then, young writers contact me for advice on writing and publishing and/or to interview me for a school assignment. In these cases, I try very hard not to terrify them. Recently, one of these young writers asked me a question that resulted in me ranting a bit. I hope I didn't terrify her, but it was an important rant on a subject I

Comments

[ext_301576]

Oh, this is me! I was recently sitting there staring at a revision, in just so much pain -- I'd tried and tried, and I hit the point of "I can't". And then this response just hit me -- if you don't do it, it won't be done. My brain shifted ever so slightly, and the next 'I can't' was met with 'but if I was going to, what would I do?'. Which sounds like a ridiculous question to ask yourself, but it turns your mind from impossibility to possibility, and voila! I did!

"But if I was going to, what would I do?"

[melissawyatt]

That's actually a really great question and I'm going to write it down to remember it! It's all about finding those first baby steps, anything to lift you out of the inertia of not doing anything. Once you can get going, get a few words down, the odds are that you will pick up steam. Sometimes you have to keep pushing for awhile even if every word smells like cow manure.

Another thing I have to keep reminding myself--when it's one of those cow manure days--is that nobody else is seeing this--or smelling it! I have to let go of the "this must be perfect or it's not worth doing" thing and just get something--ANYTHING--down on the page. Anything really is better than nothing. Even if I end up cutting everything I wrote that day, I always learn something. At the very least, I learned what not to write!