While talking to a friend the other day about creative work I realized that a constant resolution that helps me continue is the thought that I can’t lose my nerve. It’s like walking on a tightrope: there are infinite ways to fuck up and fall, but it’s important to not think about it too much, or else you’ll psych yourself out and actually fall when you otherwise might’ve been okay.

The one thing I know is that thinking about something is not equivalent to doing the thing. Thinking about it is intellectual masturbation: it’s fantasy, it’s reassurance. None of that moves you closer to actually doing the thing. Sitting around worrying is not writing, and in fact subtracts from the mental space that I know should be allotted to writing. The only thing that actually helps alleviate my anxiety is continuing to write and edit. For instance, I think I’m less anxious about writing this month than last month, and significantly less anxious than I was in April. I’ve been training myself to keep the criticism local instead of global: I scrutinize each chapter and cut out cheesy lines of dialogue and rewrite clunky paragraphs, and often feel relieved by the improvement afterwards, but refrain from thinking things like if this sentence is bad probably the entire book is just awful.

The one thing I know is that thinking about something is not equivalent to doing the thing.