Today’s topic of pep and vim and Get Up And Go: There is never a perfect time to write, so you might as well crack on and write anyway.
Otherwise known by its handy acronym: TINAPTTWSYMAWCOAWA
Years ago, I watched an episode of Grand Designs where some dude with waahaayyyy more money than sense spent two years building an entire house from scratch in the middle of a beautiful but isolated valley so he could have a special ‘writing room’ in his attic and write 500 words a day just like his hero Graham Greene.
Let me tell you something, dear writer. Without knowing any more about Mr Grand Design, I can tell you exactly what happened on the first day he sat down in his million-pound-two-year writing room. He sat on his chair with a satisfied sigh. He cracked his fingers, opened his laptop, and opened a fresh new document, and said to himself ‘Now to write 500 words like my hero Graham Greene’.
He stared at his blank document.He looked out at his beautiful view.
He looked back at his laptop.
He typed: “It was a rainy day in South Wales and Gerald stood waiting.”
Then he deleted it.
Then he looked out the window again and decided to go make a cup of tea.
While making a cup of tea, he decided that maybe he’d start again tomorrow when he was in a more creative mood.
He never wrote his book.
On the other hand, Beryl Bainbridge would balance her notebook on the washing machine or get her writing in before her five children woke up.
Beryl Bainbridge wrote her book. In fact, she wrote 20 books, and won more awards than we have space or patience to list.
In an interview (that I now can’t find which is annoying because it’s HILARIOUS), Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher said he wanted to build a music studio in his garden. His wife asked him why he needed one. He replied ‘to write songs’, to which she replied ‘what are you talking about? You don’t write songs’.
Even after being Noel Gallagher, Noel Gallagher would write songs where ever he could find a perch, or on the back of napkins or bills, and his wife had never even noticed him doing it.
And so to the moral of the story: there is never a perfect time to write.
Do not wait for a perceived ideal.
Do not wait for an invitation or permission.
Grab time whenever you can, even if that means hiding in a hoodie eating Dairy Milk tapping ideas on a phone while kids trash your house (ahem).
Storytelling is your genetic destiny.
It is what humans were designed to do.
Our ability to make stuff up, to imagine a future that doesn’t exist, to imagine an idea that hasn’t yet been imagined, to tell it as a story and then maybe build it into something real, is what sets us apart from any other living thing.
It’s a super cool gift.
Take it.
Use it.
See you on the other side.
Sarah & Team WHQ
