Sometimes people believe that you need to have an abundance of great ideas to write something.
Kevin Kelly describes it a little differently:
“I write in order to think. I’d say, ‘I think I have an idea,’ but when I begin to write it, I realise, ‘I have no idea,’ and I don’t actually know what I think until I try and write it…”
Of course this seems counter-intuitive. Backwards even.
We would think that we need to be better prepared.
Steven King has been known to do something similar – his practice was to simply “sit and write” from 6am until 12 noon in an unbroken stretch.
Of course, we could switch domains – drawing, creating music, our work, turning up to the gym.
We often like to “set the stage,” and focus on prep. But sometimes, if we throw ourselves on stage first, we find we know exactly what to do.
