I had a few tables set up at Noc Vědců, a good amount of visitors (some returned from last year!), and saw new poetry, spooky stories, and comics about youthful misadventures. Following the evidence and suggestions in Bec Evans, Chris Smith, and Oliver Burkeman’s book Written : How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit That Lasts (2023), I sought to provide concrete exercises and activities to get the creative story-telling juices flowing. Evans, Smith and Burkeman conclude that the most reliable gateway to quality writing is first quantity – gotta get writing and writing a lot in order to start producing gems. My other favorite takeaway from that book was that authors are horrible at judging the quality and potential success of their work. Another reason to keep going and to try to do a little bit better with each new project! If we stop early because we don’t think our work is no good, then we’ll never break into higher levels of work.
