Pulling a fast one on your brain
The writing equivalent of "look over there!"
One of my favorite ways to outrun writerly self-doubt is speed. Simply: Sneak out from under your conscious mind and haul ass on the page before it figures out what you’re doing and starts to censor and edit.
This could mean “just write it all out and edit it later” because there’s power in getting words on paper in any form that is both like tapping stakes into the ground on which to build a foundation, and like out-running the self-doubt nipping at our heels that sometimes trips us up and freezes us into inaction.
But among my favorite methods to accomplish this feat, in the name of speed: try to write the worst draft you can. Maybe it’s written like a 1st grader, or maybe it has huge gaps in it in which you write “insert some research here about X” and “yadda yadda find a good news hook” or “keep going keep going write this part later about where the dude gets eaten by a shark” or whatever but don’t stop. Often, this approach gives your brain permission to get to work without letting the quest for perfection become the enemy of the good, or the enemy of the done. And often, magic happens when we get out of our own way. Try it and see.
