Last night I talked with a group about how to get started with writing/how to get out of your own way. Here’s a little snippet from that talk—

(Thomas Mann, from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, via Afflictor)

Four Things I Want to Say About Writing that Might Help You

Writing is a struggle.

To paraphrase Thomas Mann: Writers are people for whom writing is hard. So if it’s hard for you, you’re in good company. Struggle doesn’t mean that you suck, and struggle doesn’t have to mean misery. Scaling a mountain is a struggle. Raising children is a struggle. Getting through grad school is a struggle. Every meaningful thing you’ve ever done in your life has been a struggle. As with those other struggles, writing can be pleasing and a pain at the same time.

Expect to do many drafts.

If you know that you’re going to do a bunch of drafts, it takes the pressure off of any single one. It allows you to be comfortable with sucking at first (which you will do, regardless of whether you’re comfortable with it or not) and comfortable with allowing a project to improve gradually over time. Pressure down, patience up. 

You don’t have to know in order to go.

Sometimes people want to figure everything out before they start drafting: meaning, structure, audience, etc. This is an awesome way to paralyze yourself. But the truth is that you don’t have to know what you’re going to say or how you’re going to say it before you start writing. You can explore and discover as you go (because, hey, you’re going to do a bunch of drafts anyway, so the early ones can be exploratory). There are no prerequisites to the page.

Stop doing shit that does not work for you.

All the time I hear writers describe a process that jams them up and makes them miserable. They moan and moan and then … they don’t change a damn thing. Why? (Insert 38 possible reasons here). Don’t be this person. There is no right way or wrong way to write. There are only ways that work for you and ways that work against you (see this synopsis of Mike Rose’s study). Find and adopt ways that work for you.