I think it was Christmas, and we were talking about writing. I was struggling with it – writing, that is – and my brother-in-law, Rob, a professor of ethics, offered a small insight into his own practice.
He, too, found writing difficult. The only way he’d been able to produce anything that approximated a consistent academic output was by cordoning off half an hour every day. In that half hour, he had two options: he could write, or he could do nothing. Doing nothing was fine – doing nothing was allowed – but the only other option was writing. Sometimes he sat there for quite a long time before he wrote but he always came away from the session with new words on the page.
There are as many pieces of advice about writing as there are writers, and I’ve heard a lot of it. Maybe it was the Christmas champagne, or maybe it was desperation, but soon afterwards I gave his technique a go – and it stuck. Sometimes I’ve had to stick my phone in a drawer with a timer running to avoid doomscrolling Twitter instead (social media does not count as “doing nothing”) but, in the years since, I’ve reverted to this technique whenever I find myself at a creative impasse on a project, or indeed struggling with anything from folding the washing to putting down 300 words about the best advice anyone has ever given me. It helped me finish a book a few years ago, and it helped me get the first 15,000 words of something new down just a few months ago.
One of the main reasons it works, I think, is because it overcomes the first, and biggest, hurdle: showing up.
Procrastination can get in anyone’s way but I’ve also noticed creative people in particular can get all caught up in their messy feelings about their work and whether or not the conditions are right for them to channel their muse. If working in journalism has taught me anything it’s that there is no “right” time and there are no “right” conditions; there is the time you have. You use the materials you’ve got. And the first precondition of getting anything done at all is trying to do it.
So if you’re struggling with something creative, just give yourself 30 minutes. You’ll either do the work or you’ll do nothing. But at least you’ll be able to say you showed up.
