I listen to the podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin. Each week she releases a mini episode titled A Little Happier. In it, she talks about thoughts on happiness that don’t fit into the main segments of her podcast.

Last week, she explored Isaac Mizrahi’s ideas on inspiration. A famous fashion designer, Mizrahi talks about inspiration as a “double-edged sword”. You see, in feeling inspiration, we can experience two emotions lurking underneath: motivation and dread. He writes,

“Inspiration presented its usual double-edged sword. The Avedon exhibit filled me with inspiration, ideas, and an impulse to get to work followed again by the familiar tinge of spiritual nausea. I floated among the beauty in that gallery. But I also sensed that this level of greatness could never be equaled. Contemplating the arduous road ahead, trying to get anywhere near that level of perfection, I felt defeat.”

I am by Isaac Mizrahi

I cherished this quote from Mizrahi because it’s how I feel when reading an author who crushes it. I am both inspired to go out and write my next project and overwhelmed by how far I must travel to become as strong at writing as they are.

A writer friend of mine says all writing is stealing (not literally, don’t plagiarize). What he means is steal what has worked for other authors. Processes, schedules, character traits, verbs you like, the way an author approaches metaphor. It’s what Stephen King mentions in his book On Writing. No, he’s not the writer friend I was talking about, in case you were wondering. However, he tells us all that reading is important because it teaches authors what they like and dislike, what they might want to make into their own and what they might want to leave to other authors.

So we can’t avoid reading. We’d probably be terrible writers if we did. Besides we want someone to read our stuff one day. So if we must read authors we admire, feel the excitement and the dread, here’s what I recommend to avoid getting stuck in the defeat portion of inspiration.

• Repeat this mantra: one word at a time. One line at a time. One paragraph at a time. One chapter at a time. Sounds simple but it’s a good reminder that all authors write books this way, even the ones that seem unattainably good at writing. Plus I find if you convince yourself you’ll start with just one word, you often get to a line, which leads to a paragraph, which leads to… you get my drift.

• Break the work into smaller chunks. Don’t think about how much you have left to go, think about what you want to accomplish today. That could be as small as I want to write a few lines of dialogue or as big as I want to write three chapters. It could be a word count goal like 500 or 2,000. It could be coming up with the backstory for a secondary character. Focus on today and today only. If I think of something I want to do in the future to tweak the project, I scribble notes to myself, thus freeing up my mental space to focus on the task of the day.

• Remind yourself how far you’ve come. Even if you’ve only written one line, that’s one more than yesterday. Sometimes it’s helpful to remind yourself that you’ve already created a short story, poem, or manuscript. Recently I saw a tweet from Victoria Loder, editor, writer, and former literary agent, referring to this sentiment. She said, “Whether your query is accepted or rejected, you’re a heck of a lot closer to publication than you were when you faced a blank page, and that’s pretty cool.” I totally agree with her, whatever your writing goals might be. If you’ve shown up and written, you’re a heck of a lot closer than you were yesterday.

What helps you get over the dread of the arduous road ahead to accomplish the work that must be done?