If you're not writing what you want... what you need to write then you're going to quit.

This is because writing isn't great. They do a good job of selling you the status of a writer but the isolated task of writing is nothing to write home about.

Like most other craft, when viewed clinically writing is a droll, meaningless task. A person is simply tapping keys, arranging words and sentences together. Over and over again. What's the point of it all? Why not do something better? The world is ripe with interesting paths to take, why trade your dwindling time

Writing

?

I appreciate

Tim Ferriss

' attitude on writing books: he only writes the books that he couldn't live without writing. As in the pain of not having written the book would be so painful that the pain of writing itself becomes an irrelevant variable.

If someone tells you to walk across hot coals to go pick up five bucks most people would pass. If you have to do it to save your baby you'll probably do it. Does that mean the objective temperature of the coals lowers, mending to your power of positive thinking? No. But it just doesn't matter anymore.

There's no avoiding the pain of actually writing something. Our only hope is to find something so worth it that you don't consider the pain.

It's easy when confronted by an empty word document to believe we know what we want to write. It's easy to lie to our friend over a

coffee

when they ask us what we really want to write. But until we really figure out what our "baby" is we'll never be able to write. You'll never be able to write.