Your first draft knows more than you do.

Hey,

I started writing this email talking about the dog this week’s strip is inspired by, and his evil owner. Two lines later, I was trying to talk about morality and some people’s obsession with trying to look like a good person instead of trying to be one through their actions.

Then I realized my email was a mess and I didn’t know where I was going.

Usually, what I do in these cases is keep writing until something actually worth publishing takes shape. Something like, “This is where I was trying to get to,” or, “I wasn’t going to talk about this, but it sounds interesting.”

But the best stuff sometimes comes from those times when I find myself writing about something I didn’t know I had an opinion on.

Because it’s like discovering some part of myself.

Writing is, once you learn to ignore your inner editor, like venturing with a small lantern into the dark caves of your mind. You start typing, and then you keep typing, and you ignore the typos and the phrases that don’t seem to make much sense.

And then you keep typing.

Then you stop, go get some coffee or do something else, and then come back to marvel at the treasure you have found inside the cave.

It may not be a treasure you’re happy to find. You may even be horrified to discover that you think certain things. But it’s still a treasure. It’s still something that’s inside you, and, whether you like it or not, it’s a part of you. And it’s creative gold, obviously, because it’s original and yours at the same time, so it’s good material to make art from.

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P.S. Now I’m thinking, “What a crappy email. I already wrote about this like three weeks ago.”

But I’m digressing.

Maybe this email should’ve been about focus.

Or maybe it already is.

Maybe the way to solve your lack-of-focus problem is to just start writing randomly about things until your brain gets tired of fooling around and makes you think about just one thing.

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P.S. 2: The Flight of The Condor: The Complete Saga. Three hundred and fifty-six pages of laser-beam focus, telling the story of our hero, form his origin to his epic death.