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How To Finish That Piece of Writing
No, seriously. This is how to do it. For real.
When I got my first book contract, a million years ago, I kept myself busy for several years researching and reporting, and then sat down to write the book and of course, came to a screeching halt. Compared to writing, reporting had seemed easy: I knew what I need to find out and I spent each day strategizing how to do that. It was a task, a concrete and specific challenge. The hollowness of existence and the infinite mystery of the universe didn’t loom as I tackled this task. It wasn’t always simple, but it was a manageable notion, like assembling Ikea furniture.
Writing, on the other hand, was daunting, mysterious, diffuse. Where to begin? What to say? Tone? Words? What the hell? Reporting often had a specific daily demand (find out how many firefighters were employed in the city of Los Angeles in 1986), whereas writing felt overwhelming, with no clear start and finish. Moreover, I found it much easier to procrastinate when it came to writing than reporting. The reason was that I always pictured the whole book (or story) as my task, and the enormity of that was simply too much to countenance. In other words, I would sit down in the morning, and immediately feel defeated because I knew that I could never finish the entire book that day. This made no sense at all — obviously, you…
