One thing that's worked for me in the past is to set myself a deadline, and a (small) creative goal to be reached by then. Failure to produce anything by that deadline is failure: producing anything at all is success. Set the deadline publically, and it's public failure, too - lots of incentive! You're allowed to go back and polish later, but the initial output has to go public by that deadline.
Yes. This is probably the only thing that ever worked for me. I got away from it and produce nothing. (Well, the simple fact that feeding myself was more important helped and financial disaster will sort of reprioritize you.)
The private deadline never worked that well for me, though I found that by making a deadline of having something public (even if I didn't make the deadline itself public) created enough of an impetuous to get something finished.
I've been musing about this on my other blog (as well as using the regular blog post as a format to force myself to write).
never allowed myself the luxury of creative inaction
Really? There seems to be too much reflection on the nature of failure for you to have 'always' abstained from inaction...
Also, within the context of the original question it sounded to me like you didn't merely not let failure stop you but that you also used fear of failure as a tool towards increasing output, perhaps even to the extent of purposefully pursuing those things you are/were most fearful of failing at.
That hypothetical is roughly as plausible as the one once posed by a former girlfriend, who asked me what I would do if forced to choose between writing and her.
I'm not really asking you to choose, I'm wondering if a man becomes a writer or a writer happens to be a man. Does your discipline come from your love of writing and you are happy to be paid for it or is this a career you found that you enjoy?
I'm rejecting the premise of your question because the two things aren't really separate.
I was very disciplined about writing long before any prospect of its being published reared its head. That's how I got to the point where I could be published when a market for my work snuck up on me, as writing for the hobby game industry did.
In 2011 the whole mechanism of being published, finding an audience, and getting paid for it is in such flux that the question may become moot.
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One thing that's worked for me in the past is to set myself a deadline, and a (small) creative goal to be reached by then. Failure to produce anything by that deadline is failure: producing anything at all is success. Set the deadline publically, and it's public failure, too - lots of incentive! You're allowed to go back and polish later, but the initial output has to go public by that deadline.
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I've been musing about this on my other blog (as well as using the regular blog post as a format to force myself to write).
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Really? There seems to be too much reflection on the nature of failure for you to have 'always' abstained from inaction...
Also, within the context of the original question it sounded to me like you didn't merely not let failure stop you but that you also used fear of failure as a tool towards increasing output, perhaps even to the extent of purposefully pursuing those things you are/were most fearful of failing at.
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Does part two answer your questions?
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I was very disciplined about writing long before any prospect of its being published reared its head. That's how I got to the point where I could be published when a market for my work snuck up on me, as writing for the hobby game industry did.
In 2011 the whole mechanism of being published, finding an audience, and getting paid for it is in such flux that the question may become moot.
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