I’ve had it…and I’d make a safe bet that some of you have had it too. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t get anything onto paper. Or are you really trying that hard?
I think the biggest problem that I faced when Writer’s Block overtook my life, was that I was waiting for the “perfect” time to write something “brilliant.”
If we all waited for that combination, there would be about 20 pages combined written by all of us writers around the globe. It was my dad who said it best “take performance over perfection.” For many years I totally disagreed with him while my half-finished stories sat in my desk drawer. Then one night in Palm Springs I was discussing the same thing with him and he told me the story about how when he worked at a manager of Production Maintenance at a then “very famous daily newspaper” he would instruct his guys that in order to get the presses running to put out that day’s newspaper, they would have to take performance over perfection. In other words, “get something done…and quickly.”
It was after my heart attack and before I had ever published a book, but my conversation with him stuck in my mind. I realized first hand just before then that life wasn’t perfect. I never anticipated suffering a heart attack…but I was lucky that everything went well when I was treated for it and I recovered in a hurry and now my life was not so much about seeking perfection…but rather producing.
Instead of dwelling on some challenges I was experiencing with writing The Gift of Stoppage Time, I switched gears after my talk with my dad and wrote A Soccer Life in Shorts very quickly. It was fun to write, I didn’t let myself get hung up on feeling that I had to produce “the next great American novel” and I was dead set on publishing it.
I published it and then quickly went back to The Gift of Stoppage Time and forced myself to sit down at times, even if it was for twenty minutes…to tell my story on paper. I didn’t expect perfection as I hit the keys. I wanted to finish a unique story I had in my brain for a long time. I knew my first draft was just the beginning of many. With that in mind, I pushed on. And eventually was done…with a first draft. Many, many drafts later and after countless times of going back in to fix this or that…it was published!
Yes, it can be a grind. But what a beautiful grind it is. Push through it. Convince yourself day in and day out that your story is worth telling. Don’t look for or expect perfection…because you will never find it. Do the best you can with your work and at a certain point, have somebody read it. If they don’t like it…de-friend them on Facebook! Kidding…
You can’t wait for that imaginary invitation that tells you it’s the perfect time to sit down and bang out words on paper. It will never come. YOU have to make time to write. YOU have to have the belief in yourself that you can get it done. YOU have to fight through the doubts. YOU will be the one who gets all the credit when it is done.
YOU can do it. YOU just have to decide whether it’s worth YOUR energy…or not.
