I don’t know much about Jennifer Egan, but she’s credited with one great quote:
“You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly. You can’t write regularly and well. One should accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.”
This is so brilliant, that it bears an entire article to unpack and talk about.
I’m a freelance writer. Been writing for a living for about 4 years. Long before that, I was simply an amateur fiction writer. I would spend free time working on a short story or manuscript. But it wasn’t until I started writing for money that certain things clicked into place.
When you’re aspiring to be a published fiction writer, it’s easy to put off work (i.e.: writing). You probably have a day job or school—and numerous other responsibilities and social obligations. Setting even ten minutes aside to work on that idea or continue to story can be impossible.
But, for me, that luxury went straight out the window—when writing meant I could pay my bills!
Freelance writing, or at least the kind I was doing, requires that I write. A lot. Often about things I either don’t know much about—or worse—don’t even care about. In order to earn enough to support myself, I had to churn out mountains of content on a daily basis.
The only way I could survive and then thrive was to be satisfied with writing badly.