I completed this LinkedIn Learning course from Seth Godin – ‘Creativity at work’ earlier this week.
In the ‘There’s no such thing as writer’s block’ video, Seth describes an exchange he had with Isaac Asimov, the science fiction author, who is responsible for writing over 400 books.
I repeat this section from the transcript:
“How do you come up with 400 published books? And he walked me over to this little manual typewriter in his office. And he said, here’s what I do. Every morning I sit here at 6:30 and I type until noon five and a half hours of typing and it doesn’t matter if it’s good. It doesn’t matter if it’s good. I simply type, and the magic of this is that if you’re sitting there typing and typing and typing, sooner or later your subconscious stops fighting with you. Sooner or later it says, well, if he’s going to make me type anyway, I might as well type something good. So no, there’s no such thing as writer’s block. What there is, is a fear of bad writing.
For me, who’s struggled with writing for this blog for a good many years, I’ve always thought that, well, people talk about writers’ block so I must have it. I had half-formed ideas I couldn’t articulate my thoughts fully to publish, days went by with no inspiration or enthusiasm to write anything, etc.
Perhaps what was actually happening is that I feared writing that just wasn’t any good. Perhaps I should just write, and see what happens?
I will, however, still strive to be authentic and relevant to the purpose or themes of this blog – education, learning, informative, leadership, technology.
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash
