These 2 Critical Writing Lessons Will Help You Get Unstuck

Don’t be afraid to build it, then don’t be afraid to shape it

Photo by Author — Mike Goldberg

Last week I took a break from writing my book to take a quick vacation to Los Angeles to see some friends and collect my thoughts. The timing was perfect. It forced me to zoom out and see the book from a different perspective.

These 2 big lessons came into play:

1. Don’t get it right, get it down

I said from the beginning I didn’t want to write an autobiography.

For one thing, I’m kind of modest and don’t really feel an autobiography is warranted (at this point.) More importantly, I look at everything I do in terms of the value an audience can receive from it. Therefore, I’m not the star of the show.

The audience is.

I got so stuck on this thought, I was afraid to begin. But I had so many great ideas I wanted to talk about, and so many great stories to tell.

As legendary editor Maxwell Perkins (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe) once said, “Don’t get it right, get it down.” It’s crucial to get in all the important details, all the good stuff before you forget it. Editing will come later, but for now, spin gold.