Writing is like a climbing a tall tower.
A couple of people have said to me recently that when they know what they want to write about, then they’ll start to dedicate more time to writing.
You know how I feel about that.
I know you know (especially if you’re a long-time reader) that you have to sit down and write first! Do the thing and blah blah blah. But I really want you to sit with this knowledge.
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You see, my friend, writing is like climbing a tall tower.
Not because it’s really difficult and annoying (if you’re taking the stairs, har har).
But because of the view.
Before you start writing, it’s like you’re at the bottom of the tower. You can’t see the view at all.
What view? There is no view.
As you ascend, the view begins to appear. The higher you climb (AKA the more you write) the more you can see. When you’re partway to the top, you can see a lot. But not as much as you can see if you climb higher.
If you’ve ever been lucky enough to climb the Eiffel Tower, you know exactly what I mean. It’s an OK view from the first platform. It's a better view from the second platform. But the BEST view comes from the very tippy top.
In fact, you can see so much more from the tippy top that the views from lower down now seem pitiful by comparison.
With each step, you rise, with each step, you see more, and the more you see the more clarity you gain. You literally see a clearer and clearer “big picture.”
That’s writing. The ideas are not going to come to you while you wait. I know. I know you know.
But have you sat with it?
- Maggie
PS: How to find the time to write? A couple of months ago I wrote about “slivers” of time. They’re not big, beautiful chunky hours, but they’re still time. They’re those 10- or 15-minute lopped off end-pieces between meetings or when you’ve done the last thing for the workday but you still have a bit of work time left.
The time you might spend scrolling on your phone. Throwaway time. (Sometimes, you do just need to throw that time away. Your brain needs margin and white space.)
But, I wondered, what if you promised yourself that for the next 7 days, you’d write for two slivers per day?
Two slivers = Two 15-minute increments = 30 minutes of writing time a day for seven days. Three hours a week (if you hit 6 days out of 7).
Did you try it when I talked about here it back in June? Either way, why not try it this week?