Safi Bahcall’s website describes him as ‘a second-generation physicist (the son of two astrophysicists) and a biotech entrepreneur. In an interview with Tim Ferris he also revealed loads more talents. He’s a writer, brilliant communicator and a very funny guy. I love his acronyms for learning and motivation. My fave is to WriteFBR. Watch the video. It’s so good!
WriteFBR stands for Write Fast Bad and (w)Rong. Terrible English but great idea. It’s not a new idea; writing teachers have been telling us to write ‘drunk’, edit sober for years, to quote Hemingway. So many writers complain of writer’s block but I think it’s because they are afraid of writing something bad. Giving up the desire to be perfect is so freeing!
Oh and don’t those perfect journals all over Pinterest make you want to puke? My journals are so messy and ugly. I aspire to be neat but it goes out the window very quickly. I’ve never been neat. I actually have a pathological fear of being neat (and a natural aversion to authority.) I went to school with a lovely girl that everyone loved and she had neat notebooks. She was pretty. Did I mention that everyone loved her? Oh, I can’t tell that story…some other time…
Where was I?
TRIGGER WARNING – I am about to write about JOURNALING. AGAIN.
Writing FBR helps us to silence the inner critic. The funny (not funny) thing about that inner critic is that you’d think it would be happy when you stop writing. It goes on and on about how rubbish you are, but then when you give up, stop writing or painting or whatever it tells you you can’t actually do, it berates you for stopping. And naturally this brings me to journaling. Yup, I’m going to blether about that again. I can’t stress enough how freeing it is to write nonsense for 20 minutes every morning. And I have regular breakthroughs for my creative writing and it helps no end with my mental state, as I have documented regularly. Journaling is NOT JUST FOR WRITERS. It’s for everyone.
But seriously. Journal. Burn the evidence if you must. But do it.
Speaking of writing FBR, Camp Nanowrimo starts in 10 days. Fark, is it really nearly April already? I have been doing a lot of prep – far more than I did in March or October last year. I’m going to write short stories and little memoir pieces for Remembering Paris. I think. It may change next week. But I’ll be ready this time. Plus I am only writing 30K words and not 40 or 50 like last April/November. (That’s bloody hard when you’re a pantser!)
I’ve been reading a lot; fiction and non-fiction and I think I am going to go on a reading fast for April. As in NOT reading for an entire month. It used to work a treat when I was painting – I’d be so creative and get lots of really go work done! Maybe I need to give up podcasts for a month…
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