Sprechen wir morgen über das Heutige

Liegt etwas Fertiges auf dem Tisch, kommt jeweils die Versuchung auf, es so schnell wie möglich in die Welt hinauszutragen. Doch wie Jerry Seinfeld im Podcast mit Tim Ferriss erwägt, kann es schlau sein, diesem Drang für einige Augenblicke zu widerstehen. Denn wird etwas geteilt, erhält man eine Reaktion. Und selbst wenn man glaubt, das man dies will, ist es vielleicht das Letzte, was man braucht.

Schaut man nach außen, geht schnell vergessen, was eigentlich geschafft wurde: Es liegt etwas Fertiges auf dem Tisch. Dafür darf man sich kräftig auf die Schulter klopfen. Lassen wir also heute heute sein. Morgen ist heute bereits gestern. Und am Gestrigen ist zweifellos einiges auszusetzen.

Hier ist der Gedankengang in den Worten der Sitcom-Legende:

Never talk to anyone about what you wrote that day, that day. You have to wait 24 hours to ever say anything to anyone about what you did, because you never want to take away that wonderful, happy feeling that you did that very difficult thing that you tried to do, that you accomplished it, you wrote. You sat down and down and wrote.

So if you say anything — it’s like the same reason — have you ever heard the thing like, you never tell people the name that you’re going to give the baby until it’s born? Because they’re going to react, and the reaction is going to have a color. And if you’ve decided that that’s going to be the baby’s name, you don’t want to know what anybody else thinks. I will always wait 24 hours before I say anything to anyone about what I wrote, so you want to preserve that good feeling. Because let’s say you write something and you love it. And then later on that day, you’re talking to someone, and you go, “Hey, what do you think of this idea?” Blah, blah, blah. And they don’t love it? Now that day feels like, “I guess that, that was a wasted effort.”

You always want to reward yourself. The key to writing, to being a good writer, is to treat yourself like a baby, very extremely nurturing and loving, and then switch over to Lou Gossett in Officer and a Gentleman and just be a harsh prick, a ball-busting son of a bitch, about, “That is just not good enough. That’s got to come out,” or “It’s got to be redone or thrown away.”

So flipping back and forth between those two brain quadrants is the key to writing. When you’re writing, you want to treat your brain like a toddler. It’s just all nurturing and loving and supportiveness. And then when you look at it the next day, you want to be just a hard-ass. And you switch back and forth.

Zitiert aus The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success (#485)

Natürlich interessiert mich jetzt, was du davon denkst. Deine Reaktion darf aber gerne noch 24 Stunden warten.

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Bild: Hawkin’s Machine for writing and drawing – Quelle.