It wasn’t until I wrote my first book that I realized my teachers had been pushing me into the Linear Work Distortion. It’s easy to fall into the trap of expecting creative work to happen linearly, as if writing is as simple as putting one word after another, or as if painting is as simple as putting a brush to canvas. When we try to emulate the great work that inspires us, we follow this false progression and end up frustrated. It keeps us from getting started. The Linear Work Distortion is the false belief that creative work is a neat, step-by-step process, wherein the final product steadily
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