I’m Lou Franco and this is episode 25 of Write While True.
The name of this podcast is a program that goes into an infinite loop, and that’s because I think of writing as an infinite game.
It’s like a game of catch, which is even more fun when you get better at it, but the only way to do that is to keep playing.
So in each episode, I’ll tell you something I learned about writing and then I’ll throw you the ball with a writing challenge or prompt.
Part 2 of the 4 episode series on Art & Fear
Back in Episode 23, I told you that I want to take a break, and that the way I’m going to do that is to record five episodes that I can edit and publish for the next few weeks while mostly taking a break.
I mentioned last week that one of the things that got me to start doing this podcast again is that I reread the book Art and Fear, and that they had so many ideas for how to get people to make art, that it worked for me to start my blog going again, and then ultimately restarting this podcast.
So, I’m doing a four part series on Art and Fear and this episode is part 2.
Last week, I shared that their secret to art making was not to have singular ideas, but to have ideas that generate a thousand variations, and can be used to generate years of work.
I’m trying to do that in the small right now, generate weeks of work, or months of work. And this four episode series is me using the idea of talking about Art and Fear to generate a month of work.
For part 2, I’m going to share the what they said that inspired me to not quit. Here’s the quote.
Quitting is fundamentally different from stopping, the latter happens all the time. Quitting happens once. Quitting means not starting again, and art is all about starting again.
That quote is really the inspiration behind season two, and the episodes I’ve made since I restarted.
There’s a lot more in the book about quitting. The book was written to answer the question of why so many artists quit.
This podcast might not last forever. There might be a time when there will be a last episode, and that’s fine if I’ve said everything I want to say about writing.
But I realized that I wasn’t done. I had learned more that I wanted to share, and so I restarted.
Don’t Quit
What about you? Are you actively pursuing your writing? If you are, great. Maybe file this episode away to listen to if you ever stop.
Then listen to it again to remember that stopping is normal. You’ve only quit if you never pick it up again.
If you have stopped, a good first step is just to reengage yourself with the work. I mentioned in episode 18 that one of the things I did to get myself to restart this podcast was just to listen to every episode again. If your work is a piece of writing, read it again, do an editing pass on it. See if you can re-spark your interest in it.
Start small at first just to get going. The goal is not to quit.
Thanks for listening. This has been Write While True, a podcast where we’re okay with infinite loops as long as they’re fun.