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Writing is easy, its quality thats hard. Any idiot who knows 5 words can write a sentence (e.g. “Dufus big much Scott is”). It might be grammarless, broken, or inaccurate but it is writing. This means that when people cant start theyre imagining the precision of the end, all polished and brilliant, a vision that makes the ugly clumsy junkyard that all beginnings are, impossible to accept. Good voice, tone, rhythm, ideas and grammar are essential to good writing, but theyre never introduced all at once. I promise you, the first draft of Strunk and White didnt follow Strunk and White. The secret, if you cant start, is to begin without constraints. Deliberately write badly, but write.
For this reason writers block is a sham. Anyone who wrote yesterday can write today, its just a question of if they can do it to their own satisfaction. Its not the fear of writing that blocks people, its its fear of not writing well; something quite different. Certainly every writer has moments of paralysis, but the way out is to properly frame whats going on, and writers block, as commonly misunderstood, is a red herring.
Consider this: Have you ever been blocked while playing Frisbee? Eating doughnuts? Dancing naked in your living room? Those are joyful things and theres nothing at stake: if you fail, who cares? Nobody. If there are no rules, and no judgment, psychological blocks are impossible. And remember writers like making names and overthinking things: there is no term for architect-block, painter-block, juggler-block or composer-block. Every creative pursuit faces similar pressures, but they dont obsess about it the way writers seem to do.
So play. Loosen up. Smile. Break the framework thats making it impossible to start. Forget the deadline and the assignment and just be an open mind with a pen. Remember that until you say youre finished, you can break all the rules. If you cant get started, your psychology is making the challenge bigger than you can handle. Thinking of the book, the chapter, the page, the paragraph, is all too big if while youre thinking, the page remains blank. Like a weightlifter out of his class, a writer with a blank page needs to lighten the load.
Writing hacks for starting
In the grand tradition of lists and books of hacks, writing hacks are clever little actions that give you leverage and put the dynamics in your favor. Here in part 1 its all about how to start.
Start with a word. The first goal is to