All Success Is A Lagging Indicator

The other day I sat down to write.

But it didn’t happen.

It just wasn’t there. The words. The momentum. One thought leading into the next. I knew I wanted to say something. I knew what I wanted it to be about. But I couldn’t get much further than that, beyond just a few sentences.

A classic case of writer’s block, right?

Maybe. Except I happen to think that writer’s block doesn’t exist. I’m with Jerry Seinfeld who said, “Writer’s block is a phony, made-up, BS excuse for not doing your work.”

The words I chose above were illustrative:

It just wasn’t there.

What is it?

It wasn’t the muses. Or inspiration. And I’ve never been a genius so that hadn’t abandoned me. What wasn’t there then?

The work.

I hadn’t done the work. Writing is a byproduct of hours and hours of reading, researching, thinking, making my notecards. When a day’s writing goes well, it’s got little to do with that day at all. It’s actually a lagging indicator of hours and hours spent researching and thinking. Every passage and page has a prologue titled preparation.

The solution to my writer’s block that day was not to write at all. It was to stop for the day and go…