Just Write Already

In music we admire musicians who practice ten or more hours a day. Painters and other forms of art are the same. Only in writing does the myth of not practicing to get better come roaring in. We teach new writers to slow down, to not work to get better, to spend fewer and fewer hours at writing, to not practice, and then wonder why so many writers don’t make it to a professional level. ~ Dean Wesley Smith

You know, that’s a really, really good point. I mean, everyone knows on some sort of instinctive level that you have to practice something to get good at it, but I know that I for one get majorly sucked into the 'perfect pot' trap.

I really need to learn to let go of that and just applying the BIC method – i.e., Butt In Chair. Sit, write, and quit worrying over the quality of the derned stuff. Research and logic are both quite clear that the more you do something, the better you’ll get. Abstractivising, as I am so fond of doing, will only get you so far; I want more than 'grandiose theories and pile of dead clay'.

So excuse me – I’m off to write :)

[Addendum: After writing this, I did in fact go off to write, and wrote nearly 1200 words of a new short in about 40 minutes. SQUEE.)