A Surefire Way to Avoid Writer's Block

I was listening to a radio station that was playing an interview with a guy who wrote several hits for the Eagles. He wasn't in the band, but was a songwriter who did pretty good for himself writing for them. One of his songs was "Peaceful Easy Feeling" which he never expected to be a hit song. He said something very interesting that struck me as something to think further about. He said, "You'll never have writer's block if you set your expectations low enough."

That seems to run counter to the idea that we should set our expectations of ourselves very high. In most areas of life that's exactly what we should do. But if you've ever tried to write a song or even a blog post, looking at a blank sheet of paper or a blank computer screen is daunting. You start overthinking. You set out to create an artistic masterpiece or write words that will change someone's life and there's just nothing there. That's one of the reasons I think I've been so unsuccessful in making this blog space a regular part of my days and weeks. My internal editor keeps saying, "Nah, this isn't a good enough idea. Keep thinking until you have something worthy to say." Of course, that means that nothing seems good enough. The blank page wins.

The point of setting low expectations is to get us to just start. Start writing. Start writing a song even if it's about something silly or stupid. I believe that once I start thinking about whether a song will be good enough for someone to have a hit with or whether a blog post will unlock someone's greatest puzzle, the pressure becomes too much.

Seth Godin, one of my favorite bloggers said, "Good ideas come out of bad ideas, but only if there are enough bad ideas." His point is that in volume, golden nuggets appear. I'm taking that to heart and trying to write in volume, and who knows? Maybe there will be some nuggets of helpful wisdom that will emerge every now and then.

Mike