So after my gripe yesterday, I dragged out the printout and worked on the silly story a little. And after a while, the “ugh” feeling went away, and I felt pretty good about what I was writing after all. Which is what usually happens. Why is it so hard to remember that?
It’s always surprising how easily things can go once you get started, especially since the getting started part is by far the hardest. You feel weighed down by all the other times you put off getting started. It’s like a rock that gets bigger when you haven’t even looked at it.
This is true for anything you procrastinate on, but the rock that keeps you from writing is an extra scary one because you can’t know what you’re going to find when you push it aside. You might find a tangled mass of worms under the rock. Perhaps behind the rock you’ll find a mysterious cave filled with treasures. Or maybe you find just think all you found is another rock and you have to break it open to find it’s really a geode filled with opal. More often than not, though, it’s something worth finding.
The sad part is that no matter what you write, when you come back to the next stage of writing, all those good feelings go out of your head, because that page, that screen, that piece of paper looks like the same damned rock and you have to push it again.
Sisyphus was a writer.
Writing Every Day 