A question was once, somehow or other, started between Collins and me, of the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their abilities for study. He was of opinion that it was improper, and that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a little for dispute’s sake. He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready plenty of words; and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without settling the point, and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair and sent to him. He answered, and I replied.

Three or four letters of a side had passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without entering into the discussion, he took occasion to talk to me about the manner of my writing; observed that, though I had the advantage of my antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which I ow’d to the printing-house), I fell far short in elegance of expression, in method and in perspicuity, of which he convinced me by several instances. I saw the justice of his remark, and thence grew more attentive to the manner in writing, and determined to endeavor at improvement.

About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try’d to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them.

But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again.

I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.

My time for these exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance on public worship which my father used to exact on me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practise it.

After saying that, however, he writes about how something he calls creative procrastination can be a massive asset for writers. Block used to very quickly transform ideas into written text when he was in his youth. He would get one idea on an afternoon and have a written story ready for his agent the following morning (!). As he became older, he let go of the habit of immediately starting typing out this ideas.

As an example of how creative procrastination helped him he describes his experience of writing a mystery story. It began by him getting the idea to the story, he got what he calls a Noteworthy Idea. In his youth he would have gone straight to his typewriter to type out the story. In this case he wouldn’t have gotten far because he didn’t have anything other than an undeveloped idea, a fragment of a thought. He had no plot, no theme, no characters and no conflict — he lacked all the details necessary for good (or at least passable) fiction.

Instead of starting working on the story immediately, he scribbled down the idea on his todo list. He saw the idea every now and then — every time he looked at his memo pad. Block goes on describing how when he read the the note about the idea, his subconscious would develop it slightly, make it a bit fuller and more detailed.

By letting the idea rest, and by not starting to work on it immediately, Block allowed the idea to develop in his mind, while he was busy writing other stories and reading inspiring books and poetry. Then, one day, he felt that he was ready to write the story. So he sat down at his typewriter and started typing.

Block calls this process creative procrastination. I think that creative incubation is a more apt name for what he did. While it’s procrastination in the sense that there’s postponement involved, I don’t consider it procrastination if you let an idea rest before you have some kind of plan of action. I’m not a fiction writer and don’t plan on becoming one, but it makes sense to let ideas develop in your subconscious a while before you start typing them out.

That’s not procrastination, that’s just a smart thing to do.

A key part of this process is to keep the Noteworthy Idea visible.

“It’s important, I think, to keep the idea visible — in a notebook, on a wallchart, whatever. That way you’ll jog your memory from time to time, and when an idea or a piece of information comes along that you can use, you’ll reach out and incorporate it in the story as it evolves.”

And as for the difference between regular procrastination and creative procrastination, Block writes:

“When it [procrastination] consists of avoiding work rather than postponing it, and when my alternative to working on Project A is not working at all. Since I’m inherently lazy, I force myself to work on Project B instead.”

I don’t know how useful it’s to label yourself as “inherently lazy” and I think there are better ways of getting started than “forcing” yourself, but those are subjects for another post. If you get a good idea, write it down, look at it at regular intervals, and notice how your subconscious develops it automatically until you one day pretty much just know what you want to write, or create.

The small text area and the button labeled “Preview” removes a lot of the pressure from writing. The subject is  clear and delimited – you know what you want to say.

You’re  agreeing or disagreeing with something the author wrote. You thought of something when reading the post. Perhaps you gained some form of insight that you want to share. Or the post reminded you of an anecdote or that really really great quote.

No one expects your comment to be exceptional or perfect. You don’t try to write the ultimate, all-encompassing comment that nobody can critique.

There’s no pressure. It’s okay to suck, to be mediocre. Who tries to write the perfect comment? No one. Blog comments aren’t supposed to be perfect.

You don’t spend a lot of time writing the comment. 5-10 minutes? Sometimes a bit more. Seldom longer than fifteen or twenty minutes. There’s so many other posts you want to comment on, so many other blogs to read. You can’t waste too much time on a single comment.

Misspellings aren’t the end of the world. (Maybe you were in a hurry or distracted. Or just really tired.)

You stop writing when you run out of things to say. (Tip #13: Have something to say!) You don’t aim for a specific word count.

If you happen to write something really insightful, people will agree with you and give you props. Most likely a couple of readers will read your comment, and then go on with their lives.

Forget the articles for now. Write comments. Lots of comments.