No, really.  I mean it.

There’s hours of work behind a finished piece of writing that are invisible to the reader.  Don’t let it fool or discourage you.

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

You’ve probably seen Whose Line is it Anyway?, a show where the points don’t matter and comedians come up with funny sketches on the spot, and the audience loves it.

Improv’s an interesting theatrical practice where you say “yes” to everything, because, well, saying “yes” makes things happen.

I discovered (through my friend Meike) that there’s actually a lot of theory running around behind improv.  One of the sayings I found, and actually have included my novel’s Word file so I see it pretty often, is the following:

Improv is allowing, not forcing.

When you allow your novel to do its own thing, yeah, a couple times you might run into a dead end, but I’ve found that the more I trust the material to do what it wants, the more fascinating things it does without me having to think about it.

Don’t feel held back by what Orson Scott Card some writing manual says you should do.  Let things happen in your work–the results may delight you!

“Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried.”

–Frank Tyger

The blank sheet of paper (I just wrote “blank sheet of failure”) is scary.  It comes with an implied message that you, sir, ain’t manly enough to fill me with anything of quality. 

Ignore it.  A dozens of pages of embarrasing scrawl in your notebook may be humbling, but those pages are also tangible results of your work.  Retreat from your desk with nothing in hand and the blank paper will be smirking behind your back before the door’s clicked shut.

Here’s my motto:

YOU CAN’T WRITE SOMETHIN’ IF YOU DON’T WRITE NOTHIN’.

Want to write something of quality?  Get ready to murder some trees, because until you start filling pages with something-anything!, you will never achieve quality.

Take ‘er away, Chuck.

“You’ve got a million bad drawings in you; you better get started.”
― Chuck Jones