Taste Test
Main Course
A lot of the time, I don’t feel like writing.
A lot of the time, like when I’m scribbling something down in one of my notebooks or in the Notes app, the writing is more of a compulsion.
Scratching a bug bite, which usually makes a bad itch worse.
Sitting down to write, unprompted and uninspired though?
Nah, that’s more of a challenge for me.
I’m a really good procrastinator, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
But in the case of writing, I am unlearning the idea that I have to wait for inspiration to strike, or wait for a flood of ideas, in order to start flowing.
So I make myself an offer:
Just write on Cold Turkey for 10 minutes.
Sometimes I struggle through that 10 minutes and it feels like forever.
And when I’m finished I move on.
However, more often than not, I see the time run out and finally feel like writing.
So I keep going, and keep going, and keep going, until I feel like I’ve written enough in one go.
A lot of the time, stopping once I’ve gotten into a flow is even trickier than starting.
Like I was saying in running theories, it’s a lot easier to feel good once you’ve gotten going than it is to get going in the first place.
I’ve noticed, though, that there’s usually a moment in a writing session when my thinking speeds up and my writing slows down.
That’s when I start to get lost in the sauce, holding several stories and ideas at once.
Sometimes I decide to stay seated and sort through everything, losing track of the time or my appetite.
When I finally finish writing for those long periods of time, I feel like I just deadlifted 500 pounds.
Just like with an intense workout, I let myself take off the next day or two.
It’s after those hefty writing sessions that I feel like writing even less than I usually do, and that’s how I know they’re taking me in the wrong direction.