If you could go back ten years and give yourself one piece of writing advice, what would you say?

Chances are it’ll be: Don’t give up on your dream. Sit your butt in the chair and just write your damn book! 

Chance are that right now, you’re still thinking about that great book you’re going to write… someday. But here’s the thing… someday never comes. There’s only today. Let tomorrow take care of itself. And, if you put in the work today, tomorrow will be better equipped to do exactly that.

So many would-be writers falsely believe that their best work happens when they’re in the right mood because when the mood hits the words just seem to flow from you. But that’s not writing… that’s typing. Writing is what you do regardless of the mood you’re in. Writing is putting in the work required to get your ideas out of your head and on the written page even if you’re not in the mood. 

If you’re like most wannabe writers, you’ll get inspired and write like someone possessed. For a little while. Then you’ll stop because ‘life’ got in the way, so you wait for the elusive ‘inspiration’ to strike again. Some weekends you stay up late as you fill page after page of story; other times you stare blankly at the flashing cursor on your computer screen as it patiently waits for you to type something… anything. And it is a patient beast; it will wait forever… which is roughly how long it takes too many people to finish anything because, like your computer, you’re just waiting for inspiration rather than actually writing.

Then the dreaded ‘Writer’s Block’ sets in and you’re stuck. You can barely type a word let alone a story. So you push writing aside until inspiration finds you once again.

It’s a common tale, but it’s one that you can easily avoid. How?

By writing.

Write something, anything, just keep writing. Write something silly, write something stupid, but write! There is no such thing as writer’s block… it is nothing more than the result of choices that you make. You can choose to waste time on Facebook watching cat videos, or you can make the decision to write. You can stare out the window looking for inspiration, or you can choose to write. Not everything you write will be great… but it’s better than everything you don’t write because you cannot edit a blank page.

First, you write it… then you make it better.

You have an imagination that reaches beyond the stars… too bad you can’t imagine yourself sitting at your desk and putting in the work that separates the writers from the wannabe-but-never-will-be ‘writers’ who do everything but actually write. They talk the talk, but can’t walk the walk. Ironically, that’s all writing really is… taking it one step at a time.

The first step is to get your idea out of your head and on the written page. It doesn’t have to be great, it just has to be written. The next step is to go back and make what you wrote even better. Whether you’re writing your first draft or the final edit, you write and rewrite it one word at a time.

If you could go back ten years and tell your younger self to quit procrastinating and start writing, what do you think your future self is going to tell you in ten years from now?

The exact same thing!

That you wasted all that time ‘thinking’ about writing and not enough time actually writing. So write.

If you have this thing called desire, you have everything! The rest is just a matter of sitting your butt in your chair every day and writing your damn book.

So what are you waiting for?