There’s a story I rather like about Eugene Schwartz.
Schwartz wrote Breakthrough Advertising, one of the best-known books in direct-response copywriting. People have paid a startling amount of money for copies.
But one of the things that interests me most about him isn’t the price of the book.
It’s a kitchen timer.
For a fellow like me who could turn almost anything into another research project, that detail is downright insulting.
He famously worked in focused sessions of roughly thirty-three minutes and thirty-three seconds.
Imagine that. A man who understood persuasion at an extraordinary level, sitting down to work with a kitchen timer ticking away.
Not a mysterious creative trance requiring fourteen candles and the correct arrangement of the planets.
A timer.
Not a personality transplant. Not a five-day seminar on the spiritual essence of deadlines.
There’s something delightfully unromantic about it.
I love the romance of a big idea. I love wandering the mental countryside looking for connections. But at some point an idea needs a sentence, a sketch, a call, a prototype, a first ugly draft.
You don’t need to become the person who never struggles to begin.
Sometimes you just need to begin.
The little secret is that beginning gives you something thinking alone cannot: a real thing to improve.
Set a timer. Choose one thing. Make something imperfect.
No grand promise here. You might create twenty lines you hate.
Still, that’s twenty more lines than you had while researching the perfect way to write twenty lines.
There’s a related confession about my own very expensive education. And if you suspect the real obstacle is waiting for permission, I have bad news about the permission-slip industry.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should probably stop writing about writing and write something.