Publish or Perish

I had forgot Bird by Bird, a book about writing that was pretty persuasive.  The main message:  don't wait for inspiration, just sit down and do it.

The problem is that the only-vaguely-inspired stuff can be tedious.  The stuff you crank, if you're just cranking, may be well written but that may be it.  Anyone who does this for the Fat Lady, as I do, and maybe for posterity wants it to be well-written and insightful and even interesting to read.  Will you always get there just by putting your butt in a chair?

Gets one to the difference between the kind of writing the Bird by Bird author, Ann Lamott, was writing about, and this blogging stuff.  If you're working on a novel or a play or a history you presumably generate a big pile of writing - OK, bird by bird - and then go back and reread it and edit it and then someone else reads and edits it and maybe someday it is published.

These squibs just emerge, a spellcheck if I remember, and off they go.

So if you do them everyday, whatever the inspiration or lack thereof, the risks of suckiness go way up.

But if you don't - in this medium, who wants to wait for a damn thing?