Done is better than perfect

So the incredible Chuck Wendig recently wrote a blog post about The Days When You Don't Feel Like Writing and, as usual, hit the nail straight on the head and sent it spiraling into another dimension of baddassery and amazingness.

Writing every day, especially on the days when you don't feel up for it, has changed how I get work done. The days when every word is like trying to pull teeth from a live, hungry great white are the ones that matter the most. If you can write on those days, you can write anytime, anywhere. And you start to believe that. That's power right there.

I use to make excuses for why I didn't get any words on paper, but that just it made it easier to continue to skip days of writing because I 'didn't feel like it' and just didn't want to.

What I've realized is that when I come back to edit my work I don't usually notice what was written on the days when I was pulling teeth and the days I was really feeling it. They all need editing, reworking and pulling together to become cohesive. Nothing shows up perfect.

It's actually one of the new things I've started telling myself "done is better than perfect" because you can't edit a draft that doesn't exist yet, you can't publish a book that was never written.

So write whether you're feeling it or not. Write when you have the time, whether you want to write or not, because at the end of he the day no one is going to pinpoint the moment you struggled in your writing of the first draft.

Get it done, and then worry about everything else.