Writing Every Day

Today there was an article posted on CNN about a guy who has written a song every day for over a year, and plans to keep doing so until he's 80.

Now, as you might expect, these songs aren't exactly 'Yesterday' material.

Most of them are cute little songs, and a few are quite good.

This pretty much proves the golf theory--if you hit a hundred golf balls in a row, even if you'd never played golf before, one of them would be the perfect swing.

Just like anything else, writing is an exercise. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

The more you produce, the better chance that something you've written will be terrific.

Of course, along the way, you write a lot of junk.

I think that's why more people who are interested in writing don't do it.

They sit down. They write something lousy. They give up.

When I started writing, I didn't care if what I wrote was lousy, because I considered myself an actor. If what I wrote was bad, oh well. I wasn't a writer anyway, was I?

Now that I consider myself a writer, I still don't particularly care if what I write on a daily basis is any good.

I just know that I have to do it in order to write something worthwhile.

A few people have told me that they want to write, but when they tell me their ideas, it's usually--

"This big sprawling work about our generation and the future and Tibetan monks."

In other words, a really ambitious piece they're never going to write, because their own ideas overwhelm them.

I'd say start small.

Do what song-a-day guy is doing. Do what I do.

Write a little piece a day, and when you're ready, move onto something bigger.

It's fulfilling to see that you can complete something in a short amount of time, even if it's something small.

I've been working on a full-length, and I still write smaller pieces every day.

To me, it's like stretching before a run.

There is an exception to the "more you produce" rule, of course.

It's called James Patterson.