How to Kill an Idea

One thing I always try to emphasize to my students is to approach writing as a fun experiment and remember why you loved it in the first place, rather than sitting down and thinking, “This is an important thing that I must get right.”
 
If you take something too seriously and decide ahead of time what it will be, that’s often a way of killing an idea.
 
—Julie Schumacher, author of THE SHAKESPEARE REQUIREMENT, in The Chronicle