Does Talking About Your Work Keep You From Finishing It?

I think half the battle of a creator is in finishing his or her projects. I wonder how many of the world’s greatest creators never created anything great, because while they may have had the intelligence and even the skill, they weren’t finishers.

Finishing is part of the art.

A guy I met once ran into Norman Mailer at an airport and asked him what he was working on. Mailer politely declined to answer the question, saying that when he talks about a book too much, it steals his motivation to write it.

*Photo Credit: Hash Milhan, Creative Commons

I agree with Mailer, and I also think it was a brilliant way to get out of answering a question most writers are asked fifty-thousand times a day! Regardless of his intention, it’s true that when we talk about our work, we give ourselves the feeling that we are working on something when truthfully…

We aren’t.

If you sat down with a pen and paper and counted the hours you’ve been working on your project, would the number be embarrassing?

Let’s stop talking about our work over coffee. We can talk plenty about it when it’s done.

Does Talking About Your Work Keep You From Finishing It? is a post from: Storyline Blog