#878: How to Start When You're Stuck, Finish What You Begin, and Stop Waiting for Inspiration — Creative Advice from Elizabeth Gilbert, Seth Godin, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Lamott and More

**Tim Ferriss** (0:00)
Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is a special ASMR edition of The Tim Ferriss Show.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:05)
Welcome.

**Tim Ferriss** (0:07)
It is very late night after a long day of writing in an undisclosed foreign location, and this is The Tim Ferriss Show.
We are going to cover a compilation of incredible insights and advice devoted to a subject very close to my heart and currently consuming a very large percentage of my waking hours, and that is writing. Over the years, I have asked some of the most amazing writers I admire questions like, how do you choose a project and stay with it? How do you begin when inspiration refuses to strike? How do you build a practice that reliably produces pages? What does your routine look like? How do you keep going when you fear your pages are terrible? Garbage. Absolute garbage. That happens, at least to me. You'll be hearing Elizabeth Gilbert on choosing and committing to an idea, Anne Lamott on first drafts, shitty first drafts at that and taking things bird by bird, Joyce Carol Oates on why you should never wait for inspiration, and Jerry Seinfeld on systematizing your writing session and training your brain. You'll also hear Mary Karr on revision and throwing out 1200 pages, Brandon Sanderson on habits behind hundreds of thousands of words per year.
Yes, that is not a mistake. I did not misspeak. Hundreds of thousands of words per year and Seth Godin coaching me, Tim Ferriss, through my own fear of bad writing and I loved putting this together. It is exactly the medicine that I need right now. It applies to many creative projects and crafts outside of writing. So please enjoy this special combination of some of my favorite people on the craft of writing.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:52)
First up, Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love, Big Magic, and City of Girls.
Her 10 books have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.

**Tim Ferriss** (2:06)
This makes me wonder how you choose, and I've wanted to ask you this for a while. I don't think we got into it in our prior conversation, which is how do you choose projects? How to spend your time? Where to allocate your limited life force? Because there's what do you want, which is where a lot of people would start.
Although it can be nebulous in a handicapping way, because that could take you in all sorts of different directions. But how do you choose your projects, things to spend time on?

**Elizabeth Gilbert** (2:35)
I'm kind of a hard ass about it.

**Tim Ferriss** (2:37)
Yeah, great.

**Elizabeth Gilbert** (2:38)
So part of the thing I've noticed that people tend to get stuck on sometimes is that they get this inspiration, right? So inspiration comes first, and inspiration is the breathing in of God, right?
So even the most empirical scientific atheist people in the world, when they talk about where an idea came from, they say, an idea came to me. They say that. They don't even know they're saying that, but they're reporting accurately what the feeling is, because that's what everyone I've ever met who's had an idea. It's the eureka moment. It's like, oh, I just heard, saw, felt an inspiration, and I know the difference between something that comes from me and something comes to me talking about prepositions again. I think most creative people do as well, like, oh, this came to me, right? And then it can feel like an assignment or it can feel like a challenge, and it's like, now I want to make this thing. But a place where I think people get sidetracked and distracted, it's very, very, very similar to meditation. Like meditation, spirituality, and art have so much in common. So this may sound familiar to people who are like, maybe you've had this experience. You start working on this thing that was this inspiration, and couple weeks, couple months into it, couple days, another idea comes. And that idea seems more interesting than the one that you've already invested some time into.
And then you're like, but I want to do this thing. This thing is like fresh and exciting. This is the really, really cool thing, right? And then you go and do that one, and then another idea comes, and then it's like you're dealing with this melee. So oftentimes people will say, to me, I'm working on a book and I'm halfway through it, but I've got this other idea that I think is way better, and this book feels really stale, and it doesn't have any life in it. And I always say, like, okay, well, I give you permission to quit working on that first project, but only if you have a proven track record of ever being able to finish a thing.