{"id":3198,"date":"2019-11-08T14:01:41","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T14:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/?p=3198"},"modified":"2019-11-08T14:01:41","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T14:01:41","slug":"start-before-you-think-youre-ready","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/start-before-you-think-youre-ready\/","title":{"rendered":"Start before you think you\u2019re ready"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This bit of advice comes from the great Austin Kleon newsletter. Check it out <a href=\"https:\/\/austinkleon.com\/2019\/11\/05\/start-before-you-think-youre-ready\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s Stephen Harrigan (talking about his book,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2rbW2vz\">Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas<\/a>) and a reproduction of one of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Saint_Augustine_in_His_Study_(Botticelli,_Ognissanti)\">Botticelli\u2019s paintings of St. Augustine<\/a>. (Like almost all writers, St. Augustine, too, wondered about the problem of how to begin. )<\/p>\n<p>In my experience writing books, it isn\u2019t just a \u201cresistance\u201d thing or a \u201cperfectionist\u201d thing or a fear thing, it\u2019s more about research&nbsp;and wondering if you\u2019ve done enough of it. Research becomes your way of procrastinating, because, let\u2019s face it, research is just more fun than writing. (Me, personally, I became a professional writer so I could be a professional reader.)<\/p>\n<p>Steven Johnson says the answer is to \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/the-writers-room\/research-as-you-go-281c7539ad92\">research as you go<\/a>\u201d:&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Email and social media and games are obvious distractions. In my experience, the more subtle threat \u2013 particularly for non-fiction writers \u2013 comes via the eminently reasonable belief that you\u2019re not ready to start writing, because you haven\u2019t finished your research yet.<\/p>\n<p>Read the whole article <a href=\"https:\/\/austinkleon.com\/2019\/11\/05\/start-before-you-think-youre-ready\/\">https:\/\/austinkleon.com\/2019\/11\/05\/start-before-you-think-youre-ready\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This bit of advice comes from the great Austin Kleon newsletter. Check it out here. Here\u2019s Stephen Harrigan (talking about his book,&nbsp;Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas) and a reproduction of one of&nbsp;Botticelli\u2019s paintings of St. Augustine. (Like almost all writers, St. Augustine, too, wondered about the problem of how to begin. ) In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-musicians","7":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3199,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198\/revisions\/3199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/distil\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}