Write Fast and Don’t Look Back

Thirty-one posts later, I have to say I am happy to be finished with my month of daily blogging, but I am also glad I did it for one reason above all: It encouraged me to take creative risks.

In her book inGenius: A Crash Course in Creativity (a book about which I am considering doing a series of posts: it is that good), Tina Seelig writes this in the chapter “Move Fast–Break Things”:

“Successful innovations result from trying lots of approaches to solving a particular problem and keeping what works. This necessarily results in a large number of unexpected outcomes and discarded ideas. If you aren’t throwing away a large percentage of your ideas, then you aren’t trying enough options.” [p. 154, emphasis added]

I wouldn’t want to blog daily all the time, but in short bursts, publishing a post every day is valuable practice in what Seelig calls experimentation, trying new things, seeing what sticks and—maybe even more important—what doesn’t.

Not every writer needs this particular kind of practice above all else. Some writers need more practice in slowing down, looking back, waiting, revising. My tendency, however, is to slow to a crawl with writing projects, to look back so far that I can’t find my way back, to wait forever for everything to be just right, to revise the same paragraph over and over and over rather than writing.

Sometimes, to move on, I just need to write fast and not look back.

Photo credit: Fastest writer in the world, by hisks