your wheels. To waste your creative energy on frivolous things like an endless series of check-ins.
You know what most of this crazy, social media platform maintenance is? Stalling. Procrastinating the real work you need to do, which is writing.
I don’t play that game anymore. I pick a few networks that work for me and I say “good riddance” to the rest. If you’re going to be a real writer, you’ll have to make similar sacrifices.
I don’t know your distractions, but you do. Fess up to them, do a little purging, and get to work.
Cancel Contingencies
There’s a trend amongst writers. Most have more ideas than they know what to do with. They have hundreds of half-written articles and a few books started.
How many of these projects have they finished? None. I was the same way.
Once a month on a Saturday, when the wind was blowing just right and I felt inspired, I would write. I’d write for hours at a time — long, drawn-out essays about who-knows-what. It felt beautiful and precious, but really it was a waste of energy.
I would come up with imaginative ideas and potential projects —websites and communities and other brilliant creations. Some of them I’d actually start, even followed through with a few. But I finished exactly none.
I wasn’t creating. I was only dreaming.
This is dangerous territory, when your creativity hijacks your productivity. Do you know what’s at work here, when we thrash around with countless projects?
FEAR.
Fear of finishing. Fear of picking one thing and sticking with it. We think, what if it’s the wrong thing? What if I mess it up?
Here’s the truth: There is no wrong thing. Just begin. Once you learn how to finish, you’ll be able to start again.
Cancel all backup plans, pick a project (it may be a book, blog or whatever) and move forward. Start writing. If you don’t, all you’re doing is waiting.
Fail Forward
As you cancel contingencies and find something to stick with, you’ll need to learn how to ship. You’ll have to move through fear. You’ll have to learn the lesson every writer hates learning.
In fact, nobody wants to learn this lesson: how to fail.
Steve Jobs once said, “Real artists ship.” I love that. However, someone recently reminded me it’s the shipping part that’s emphasized when it should be the artist part.
In other words, just because it’s shipped doesn’t make it art. But if it doesn’t ship, it doesn’t matter what it is. Art is creation. It needs to exist on paper or screen to fulfill its purpose. Which is to change something.
Real artists risk failure every time they release their work into the world. If your words are going to matter, you will have to do the same. You will have to let go.
Until you do, you’re not creating art. You’re just screwing around.
Remember: The fear of something is always scarier than the thing itself. Yes, there is pain and rejection. But the greatest failure is to never risk at all.
When you fail, you don’t really fail. You learn . You draw a lesson from it. You find new ways to move forward, ways to work around future problems. As Thomas Edison said, you find 999 ways to not succeed. If you persevere, you hit that 1000 th try — the moment of breakthrough.
But this happens only if you ship.
Build a Community
When I first started writing and sharing my work, it was on a blog. Blogs let you see how many readers you’re affecting every day, so it was easy for me to get off-track — to focus on results instead of process.
I chased numbers, not people. I thought like a pollster, not a conversationalist.
Not surprisingly, I failed. I had hundreds of daily visitors, but no friends or followers. No one who really cared about my work.
If you’re going to fall out of love with public approval, something interesting will happen: People will be deeply attracted to your work.
They won’t be able to help it. Passion is contagious. If you treat people like human beings and write from a