Shut Your Piehole and Do it Already

What's worse than crappy writing? No writing at all. You can't edit anything if have nothing to work with. You can't query, pitch, sell or market something that hasn't been written. If you want to be an author, at some point in time you have to park your butt in a chair consistently enough to pound out some words, and the first time you plop into the ol' roly-poly chair is the hardest.

Blank screens are the worst. Stephen King or Ted Dekker ought to do a horror novel on the phenomenon. Why does an empty page evoke such terror? Van Gogh sums it up quite nicely in a letter he wrote to his brother Theo. . .

"Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, 'You can't do a thing'. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all."

~ Vincent Van Gogh

If this fear grips you by the throat, do what I do. Don't over-think it. Simply start typing. Dialogue, prose, a shopping list. . . anything. Words are words, after all. Think of the action as greasing the wheels of creativity.

The best thing of all is that this concept doesn't apply only to writers. This "just do it" theory works for any big project that's staring you in the face. Do something. It doesn't have to be big or even perfect. Don't expect it to be grandiose. In fact, expect that you'll eventually toss out your early work. The point is to begin some forward motion.

Eating an elephant begins with one bite, so pull out a fork and dig in to whatever overwhelming task it is that you'd like to accomplish.