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Any famous writer I've ever read about has said that the amateur waits for inspiration, whereas the professional just sits down and gets to work. 12 months fro
by Swizec 11y ago
Any famous writer I've ever read about has said that the amateur waits for inspiration, whereas the professional just sits down and gets to work.
12 months from now you won't be able to tell what you wrote while inspired and what while schlepping.
- soft_dev_person 11y agoYes, this is so important to communicate. I think "waiting for inspiration" is a bad approach and bad advice for anyone who want to do something professionally. Unless you are inspired 20-40 hours per week, only hobbyists have the luxury of waiting for inspiration. Also, how will you ever improve in something if you only do it while inspired? And how will your inspired work be any good if you have no practice and experience to build upon?
- Swizec 11y agoThe main thing is that getting 4 masterpieces is extremely likely if you produce 10,000 works, and next to impossible if you produce only 4.
- cJ0th 11y ago> The main thing is that getting 4 masterpieces is extremely likely if you produce 10,000 works Yes and no. Once you succeeded in creating a masterpiece it can become incredibly hard to ever create something worthwhile again because success (especially when rewarded by the markets) can screw up your mind for good. You loose your sense of wonder, you feel the pressure to have success again and so on. It could very well be that you just create more of the same or get worse due to this. I think bands that are considered one hit wonders might provide a good example. It's a bit like an optimization algorithm that found a local optimum but can't escape its current neighborhood.
- allengeorge 11y agoAlso, you (hopefully!) learned something while failing at those 9994 attempts that you fed into the 4.
- visakanv 11y ago> 12 months from now you won't be able to tell what you wrote while inspired and what while schlepping. I've been writing almost every day for probably about a decade now. The reality of it is a little more nuanced that that. It's more like... 20% of the time you were inspired, you'll realize that what you produced was still crap. Similarly, about 20% of the time you were schlepping, you'll realize it was actually pretty good. And about maybe 20-30% of the time, you'll find yourself getting 'inspired' midway through a schlep. And as you do it more and more often, you start subconsciously preparing things in anticipation of the work.