Putting Pen to Paper

You can call yourself a writer all you want, but you do actually have to write. You have to put pen to paper. You have to create, to follow the urge when it calls you.

Ideas are easy. Undoubtedly, they are the easy part. I can hear people screaming in the distance about creative blocks and burnout. Believe me, I have been there. This past summer and stretching into the winter, I experienced the worst case of creative burnout in my life. I couldn't bring myself to do much of anything, but I never stopped having even little inklings of ideas. When your brain is trained to look for ideas and inspiration, it never really stops.

What’s hard - what the blocks really affect - is execution. It’s the ability to see a full picture from a small idea. It’s an inability to let yourself be awful for that first draft and fix it later. It's paralysis from the daunting thought of just how much time and effort that goes into making something truly good. It’s the icky feeling that comes from the thought of the people perceiving something you put so much vulnerability and effort into. But those things can be pushed past.

You just have to write. Push past the lack motivation, the blocks, the nagging thoughts. There are no rules, not so long as you consistently muster up the strength to create something you think is worthy.

I’m telling you all of this because it is what I need to hear. It’s a beautiful day in New York and all I have done for a week is think about writing. I need to hear this, so I imagine that there is another artist out there procrastinating by reading this who needs it too.

We need to just write. we have to follow the impulse telling us it's what we’re meant to be doing. When you’re done - however long that may take - I would love to read it or watch it or consume it in whatever form it has taken shape. Send it my way, so we may revel in the metamorphic wonder that is the inkling of an idea all grown up.