This post is about 250 words. Note the #1 in the title. I expect many posts in this theme.

Yesterday was an all-around bad writing day: both at the office and in my personal life. My energy level was low. My creativity was non-existent. In fact, this post contains the uninspired remnants of the day. Fortunately, it’s short.

• I needed to write some marketing copy. Nope.
• I needed to work on my manuscript. Nope.
• I needed to write a recommendation for someone. Nope.
• I went to a go-to remedy for days like this: blogging. Big nope.

Most of what I wrote is garbage. Seriously. Here’s what it was like re-reading some of it this morning.

Fortunately, years of writing have allowed me to jettison my ego when it comes to days like that. I’m willing to throw away every single word and start over. I’ve often found it takes more effort to fix uninspired writing than it does to simply begin again.

As such, the day was not a complete waste. As many have said before me, a person learns more from the failures than the successes. I learned (again) that days like this still occur regardless of how many thousands of hours I’ve spent on the craft.

Here are three helpful things to remember when you have a writing day like this:

1. Bad writing does not equal a bad idea – go back to the heart of the idea
2. Start fresh – don’t try to re-work garbage
3. It always gets better – because it certainly can’t get worse!

Good luck and good writing!

–Michael