This is not a triumphant blog post. But it’s something.
The worst days are the ones when I just don’t sit down. Then I find myself at 9 PM wanting to get in bed with a book but feeling like I have to try to squeeze 500 words of novel out of a brain that’s already been exhausted by a day of screwing around on my iPhone.
On the other hand, when I do sit down to write, even when I don’t know what’s going to come out I almost always produce something of value. Sometimes something I never expected.
A lot of the time I still don’t get around to working on the novel. It’s been several weeks now. It’s much easier to just write down my thoughts which might turn into a journal entry or a blog post (hi). It’s much easier to avoid doing the work that’s the hardest, that makes us feel the most like despite writing for our entire adult lives we have no idea what we’re doing.
But there’s still no solution that I can see other than just sitting down and starting to write even when we don’t know what’s going to come out and would rather just be looking at the Internet instead.
Take something that’s in your head and get it out of there. Even if it’s misshapen, even if you never share it with the world. It changes you, just a little. You’re not quite the same as you were before you wrote; you’ve taken a step.
That’s why no words are wasted.