As Nike almost said, Just Start It

What tends to get the first 20 words down on any page, anywhere for me, is coffee. I make a coffee before I sit at my desk and whether it’s the caffeine or the habit that magically makes the words appear, I don’t know. What I do know is it works, so I do it all the time. Now I battle with my coffee intake instead of my words, which is a new fun challenge I like to console with a story. A couple of years ago, Mark Manson told the story of a novelist who had written more than 70 novels. He was able to write so many, so well, thanks to 200 crappy words each day. Of course he didn’t write only those 200 crappy words a day. He wrote thousands, but the 200 crappy ones would get him started. The power of momentum would take care of the rest. It is what Mark Manson calls The ‘Do Something’ Principle which he writes about in his book, The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F***, and this blog post.

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