Control Your Fear and Your Ego
Don’t get too hung up on your first draft
Wake Up and Write is a regular advice column from Moms Don’t Have Time to Write. Today, we have Cathleen Schine — author of The Grammarians— who shared writing advice on the podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, hosted by Zibby Owens.
“Don’t take yourself too seriously.”
“If you see yourself as an artist when you start out, you will immediately start thinking you’re a failed artist, unless you’re a jerk. It’s good to keep perspective and just say, ‘I am putting some words on paper. Either they’ll work out or they won’t. I’m going to write them.’
People get very hung up on their first draft or first sentence or first chapter and keep rewriting and feel bad about themselves. For me, I feel like you have to write what you have to say then you go back and you edit and make it really good.
For my first book, I wrote one page a day, period, no matter what, not two pages, not half a page. That was the way I controlled my fear and my ego. If you wait around for inspiration, good luck to you.
Inspiration comes, but you have to be sitting there doing your job for inspiration to bother to visit you.”
Listen to the episode:
https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/cathleenschine
Buy the book:
