Time to Write

What's the most important question about writing?

In his short manifesto, “A Brief Guide to World Domination,” Chris Gillebau says that the two most important questions are, “What do you really want out of life?” and “What can you offer the world that no one else can?”

For many reading this, your second answer will have something to do with your writing. However, it’s all too easy (as I noticed during my years in Hollywood), for this question to turn into, “What can I write that is similar to what somebody else has written and had a big success with?”

Leaving aside any issues of selling out, personal integrity, etc., it’s the wrong question even on the commercial level. Generally, the people who do make a lot of money do so by offering something that is in some way new or different. And most of the time they (like J. K. Rowling) choose that topic because somehow it has chosen them.

 The question for the day: What can you write that only you can write?

 (You can get the manifesto here .)

Don't wait to be great (write your book now)

Sloane Crosley, author of "I Was Told There'd be Cake," offered these wise words in an interview with Piper Grosswendt in the Bowdoin Orient: 

"You don't really have to wait to be great, or to do what you want to do," Crosley said. "I think that one of the best things I ever did was really complete an intensely terrible novel as an undergrad, which will never see the light of day—but I'm glad I did it so I know that I can at least start and finish, maybe to a more quality effect later."  

Crosley's book of humorous essays has been picked up by HBO for a possible series.

(If you always intend to write but never quite get around to it, or you start many writing projects but don't finish them, you're probably being stopped by one of the seven writing fears. They're covered in my book, "Your Writing Coach" covers them--and how to overcome them. You can get it at the usual online outlets or in better bookstores -- a better bookstore being any that stocks my book :-) )