Always Be Writing

I modified the concept from Glengarry Glen Ross, always be closing. Alec Baldwin's delivery was harsh but he was right. You need to always be doing the thing to be successful.

One cannot write effectively when it is situational.

Not when you are happy. Not when you are sad. Not when the room is quiet enough, the coffee is good enough, the idea is important enough, or the week has finally given you permission to have a thought.

Write.

There is a version of creativity that gets sold like a weather event. The muse arrives. The clouds part. A person with excellent hair stares thoughtfully out a rain-streaked window and produces something devastatingly beautiful before lunch.

That is marketing.

Most writing does not begin with revelation. It begins with a sentence you are not sure about. A complaint. A weird observation in the parking lot. A phrase you heard in a meeting that will not leave you alone. A thing your kid said. A thing you wanted to say but did not because the room was not built for it.

Write that.

Write when you are angry, because anger knows where the splinters are. Write when you are happy, because joy is terrible at preserving its own evidence. Write when you are bored, because boredom is often your brain tapping the glass from inside. Write when nothing has happened. Especially then. The point is not to turn every feeling into content. The point is to stop requiring a feeling before you begin.

Some days, you will write a whole piece. Some days, you will write one sentence that sits in a notes app for eight months before it finds its job. Both count.

Write everything and sort it out later.