It’s an interesting point being made here about how there’s a definite anxiety that sets in when things are left undone. Particularly what the author is talking about is the anxiety of “unrealized potential,” the feeling that you’re not doing everything you should be doing. He offers there some general advice on how to take that unrealized potential and make things happen, but he frames the issue as one that’s dependent on you having the courage to just go for it, already.

That’s true in some cases, sure. But for others the gap separating “unrealized potential” from “realized action” isn’t desire or intent. It’s not that we’re unaware of what it would take for us to feel fulfilled and free of this anxiety or that we’re held back by voices telling us we’re not capable in some way.

It’s just that we don’t have enough damn time.

Along similar lines, there’s something to be said for the idea that having a day job can actually be good for a writer. It can offer a break from staring into the gaping maw that is the blank page that follows us like ghoul sometimes. Of course that assumes you can *get* a day job, something that shouldn’t be presumed given the troubles facing the labor market as layoffs keep hitting every industry. While there may technically be one job for every unemployed person in the U.S., those jobs and the skills of the searchers don’t always match up.

It also assumes that “fretting about writing” isn’t what you would prefer your day job to be. If it is, that other job isn’t going to do anything but create the kind of anxiety identified in the first post. You’re not going to feel like you’re getting a much-needed bit of relief, you’re going to feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day for you to do everything but you’re so tired when you get home you write 50 words and then spend an hour watching “Kids in the Hall” clips on YouTube.

There’s a real struggle that happens when writing *isn’t* your full-time job but you want it to be. The anxiety and feelings of regret are palpable and overwhelming at times. If you can find a balance or some way to cope with that, you’re doing better than a lot of other people out there.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

There’s that old saying that art is what happens within constraints. Painters have to work within the confines of the canvas, sculptors within the size of the available display space and so on. If we’re given too much space, artists will meander and continue tweaking, adding and removing to the point where nothing is ever truly finished. It’s a symptom of the creative mind that we can sit there and endlessly mull what could be done better – or at least differently – until the end of time. George Lucas summed it up when he said “Films are never finished, they’re abandoned.”

That’s why, to me, my time writing for the Weblogs, Inc. series of blogs, particularly AdJab, was such a valuable experience. The philosophy espoused by founder Jason Calacanis and held by the editors of the various sites was simple: Publish fast, fix later. It’s not that he or anyone else didn’t want to be accurate. It was more meant to encourage you to not endlessly noodle with the phrasing or obsess about other details. Get the facts right, but don’t worry about flowery prose. You could always go back and clean up some copy later if you had the time.

The format on AdJab was simple: Keep it to around 150-200 words, be funny (when appropriate) and get to the point. Don’t get caught up in small details or extensive stage-setting. Assume the reader is there for a reason and treat them intelligently, informing at the same time you’re entertaining.

What I did at AdJab was indicative of where blogging was back in the early- to mid-2000s, when it was just hitting the mainstream culture. We took stories that appeared on Ad Age, Adweek, MediaPost, The New York Times and elsewhere and recapped them and commented on them, calling out some key points and helping to provide the reader with (hopefully) a fresh take on the news. We *always* linked back to original sources because that was the damn point, to serve as a digest for readers, a quick jumping off point where they could see most interesting news in one place and then go read the full story if they wanted more background.

Over the course of my time at WIN I got *really* good at the format. That’s part of what’s served me well for the rest of my career. Things like the “Quick Takes” feature I’ve published here (though that’s currently on hiatus) and the “PNConnect Weekly Reading” overviews I wrote at Voce/Porter Novelli for years are simply new versions of the “Ad Age in 60 Seconds” feature at AdJab, offering a few bulleted sentences on key stories the audience should know about. Even as I read any news story on any given day I’m still writing in my head the 160-word, two paragraph post that calls out the most important elements.

I know this may seem like a strange example to call out given my tendency to go on and on at times, taking advantage of the freedom allowed by online self-publishing to use as many words as I want to explore all sorts of rabbit trails of thought. But having to work within the AdJab/WIN model forced me to focus and, as the headline of this post says, made me a better writer. I had to economize my verbiage. While I didn’t spend hours on the editing process, I often reviewed first drafts that were over-long and found unnecessary sentences that were subsequently cut. Eventually I got to the point where such a review wasn’t needed and Draft 1 was a tight 145.

The point is this: Even if I *don’t* do that currently, I know I *can* do that. It’s a skill set that, as a writer, I have in my back pocket.

If you want to challenge yourself, put some constraints around your writing for a period of time. Sometimes the best way to grow is to work within what may initially seem like daunting limitations.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

In the last couple weeks I’ve watched two music-oriented films on Netflix.

The first, Chicago: Now More Than Ever, is a decent overview of the four decades of the band’s history. It’s largely self-promotional piece, produced by the son of the band’s current keyboardist and singer Lou Pardini. As usual with histories of the pop/jazz/rock ensemble it lingers a bit too long on the band’s glory days and therefore isn’t fully satisfying for those of us who came in around “18” and would like to see more of the post-1986 era. There are also moments that are surprising (Ummm…where’s Bill Champlin?) and not so surprising (Dawayne Bailey continues to be unremembered despite his decade as lead guitarist).

The second is John Mellencamp: Plain Spoken. This is less a documentary and more a new twist on the concert film model. The camera does follow a concert by Mellencamp and his band but a running commentary from Mellencamp himself is laid over the footage, meaning you can’t hear much of the music being played. That’s both slightly disappointing – the band sounds great – and intriguing because it adds to the idea that Mellencamp is at heart a storyteller. So you literally have him here telling stories while he’s telling stories. It’s a bit egotistical, but it would be more frustrating if he weren’t such a continually interesting character.

(side note: I’m a *big* fan of Mellencamp’s last decade of work, when he decided to go all-in on emulating his idol Woody Guthrie. He clearly gives zero cares about being liked and just wants to do work that fulfills him personally. The concert in the film starts off with a bunch of more recent tunes and then shifts to older hits, all of which have been rearranged in minor keys, accentuating the sometimes-unsettlingly dark lyrics. By stripping away the original recordings’ jangly guitars and snappy drums these are laid bare in a way that really hits a nerve. Love it.)

There were moments in both where the subject being interviewed shared a lesson they’d learned that’s applicable not just to music but to writing and most other creative pursuits.

In Now More Than Ever, Chicago trombonist Jimmy Pankow is talking at one point about how hard he and the other members of the band practice. That was true back in the 70s when they were all kids on the road 300 days a year and putting out an album every year. What he says is something like this: You have to practice to the point where you’re able to take the sound you have in your head and be able to express it through the instrument.

In Plain Spoken, Mellencamp toward the end is talking more about how he’s always worked to take his own unconventional path in the music industry, insisting on doing what he wants and not what a bunch of executives who can’t carry a tune feel he *should* do. It’s a theme he hits often in his commentary, but at this point he says something like this: An artist should strive to consistently surprise not just the audience but themselves as well.

Both of those are so important.

Writing isn’t just about putting one word behind another until you reach the end of a sentence and then string a few of those together into a paragraph. It’s about communicating an idea, some idea that’s important to you. Or, failing that, an idea that should be important to the audience. That’s why practicing writing is so vital, whether you wind up publishing it or not. You sit there and you keep writing and erasing and writing again and trashing and writing again until you feel satisfied with how it looks and sounds. The best writers figure out a process for themselves that makes the process easier, but that takes even more practice and self-awareness.

To Mellencamp’s point, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a quarter of the way into a blog post, fiction story or some other project and realized it was going in a whole different direction than I had initially expected it to. The piece has leaked through my fingers in a way I didn’t plan and taken me by surprise. I can’t believe I’m the only one who’s felt that happen and those are some of my favorite pieces, ones I’m even more satisfied with than usual.

There are lots of mediocre writers out there that are hugely successful. You can tell, though, the ones – whether they’ve broken out in some manner or not – that have put in the work and are trying to do their own thing in spite of conventional wisdom trying to pull them in some other direction. That’s true, I think, of any art form.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.