I saw this tweet go by a few weeks back:

Specifically the line:

It’s falling so in love with interesting ideas that you can’t help but tell the world about them.

Now, in business, falling in love with your ideas is death. It will take you into the abyss. Instead, you need to fall in love with the customer and their problems.

But “art”, in this case writing, is different.

Birthing the piece or the story, making it exist in the world, has to be more interesting than anything else you could be doing.

The “problem” is one of your own devising. There is a kernel of an idea. You need to iterate on it, challenge it, get feedback on it, rewrite it 100 times, until you can see what it really is, what it was always supposed to be.

Maybe “love” is the right word.

Perhaps “obsession” is better.

You need to be obsessed with the idea, that and the need for the best version of it to exist in the world. No one else can do it, only you.

It’s not work. A habit won’t save you. It’s an (unhealthy!?) obsession.

Thinking about it all the time. Working on it all the time, until you can’t add or subtract anything anymore.

Ship.

Repeat.

You’re not clocking in and clocking out, doing you’re daily habit or 9-5. You’re pushing a bolder up a mountain, inch by inch. Alone.

Missing an opportunity to push that next inch is painful.