In the course of Making Things there is an undisputed, torturously difficult first step: getting started. Whether it’s because you’ve got a whole heap of self-doubt, little spare time or inferior – you call them unworkable – tools, there are some serious barriers to entry for creative work.

Merlin Mann has made a career out of advocating ways to cut through personal apathy, excuse-making and general procrastination. Though I have only read a relatively small slice of what he has written – reading it all would be a pretty arduous task considering the wide scope of his internet presence – it’s the above quote that really got me. If you’ve ever experienced a creative block, I’m sure it’ll get you too.

Brute Force

Mann is, of course, referring to the Brute Force school of thought, the key dictum of which goes something like this: sometimes you can’t hop over those barriers to entry – sometimes you’ve got to push through them. A binary choice: do it or don’t. Easy, right?

Let’s pretend it is. You suddenly find yourself at that most crucial of all junctures – the painful first step, the point at which all energy is just potential.

To your left is a torturous path of self-consciousness, repetitive stress injury, possible dysfunction and, perhaps ultimately, self-respect and absolution. This is where you want to be, but it’s certainly not going to be easy (and never claimed to be, either).

To your right looms whatever it is that you’ve had all along. And the way there is all downhill. Heck, you can lie down and roll there, if you want. ¹

Presented with this maddening choice, how’s a rational human being supposed to act?

1,000 Words Per Day

To this end, I resolved over a month ago to sit down every day and write 1,000 words.

The inspiration came in the form of a blurb on author Michael Chabon’s Wikipedia page describing his own writing process: write Sunday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. I had never thought of approaching writing that way before – as if it were a job, with clearly delineated hours and overtime. I mean, was I supposed to clock in or something?²

Chabon, of course, had his first novel published when he was just 25. Clearly his discipline was, and continues to be, a powerful asset.

The simple truth is that nobody is born with a fully-developed writing muscle; it’s slowly sculpted, Schwarzenegger-style, over the course of years of backbreaking work. This is the second-most important thing to remember when it comes to creativity (the most important being, of course, the quote at the top of this page).

What Happened Next

As it turned out, 1,000 words per day was a tall order. I managed to keep up with it for about a week before I got my first lousy post-college job and the bottom fell out. Since then, it’s been snatches of 200 words here and there. In the month of July, excepting this blog and all the writing and coding that I’ve stuffed into its craw, I have written a total of 2,722 words³.

By most accounts that’s a pitiful figure for a person who was hoping to make a serious commitment. ⁴ And, to make matters worse, I tend to cite all of the barriers I mentioned in the first paragraph – no time (I have a job!), extreme self-doubt (what do I have to write about, anyway?) and a complete lack of tools (if I only had a camera-a nice one-I’d be the greatest thing since Hitchcock!) – as the reasons why.

With this blog I hope to redouble my efforts. Even so, I consider it fairly emblematic of my worst tendencies (it took me nearly two months to design and code everything – a period during which I did very little writing, citing the fact that I was too busy working on my imminent vessel of true expression and would start as soon as it went live, etc etc).

Rule #3: only lousy workers blame their tools

Think rationally. Understand that, objectively, there is absolutely nothing standing between you and your first novel. Or your first painting. There’s just tons of hours to get through and some bad habits to slay.

So get going. We’ll do it together.

1. Whether you like what you’ve had all along is out of the question, as far as this hypothetical is concerned. The point I’m trying to force is that it’s simply familiar, a place where gravity will deposit you by default. [↑]
2. But, then again, the longest writing project I have ever been able to finish, or even get off the ground floor, was a screenplay. And even then, that was only after a tortured semester of countless manic, after-midnight writing spats. In the absence of all outside forces, this seems to be my natural tendency. So maybe clocking in and out isn’t such a crazy idea after all. [↑]
3. Plus perhaps several thousand more that disappeared forever when my pocket notebook went through the wash. With great reluctance I decided not to include them in my calculation, because I can no longer prove that they even existed. [↑]
4. This is doubly true when that person also hopes, one day, to make a living from writing. [↑]