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Chain Smoking Woody Allen has averaged a film a...

Dec 28, 2012
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Chain Smoking Woody Allen has averaged a film a year for over forty years. He never takes time off: the day he finishes editing the film is the day he starts writing the script for the next. Bob Pollard, the lead singer and songwriter for Guided By Voices, says he never gets writer’s block because he never stops writing. Ernest Hemingway would stop in the middle of a sentence at the end of his day’s work so he knew where to start in the morning. Joni Mitchell says that whatever she feels like is the weak link in her last project gives her inspiration for the next. Add them all together and you get a way of working I call “chain smoking.” You avoid stalling out in your career by never losing momentum. Here’s how you do it: instead of taking a break in between projects and worrying about what’s next, use the end of one project to light up the next one. More from Show Your Work! →

Chain Smoking

Woody Allen has averaged a film a year for over forty years. He never takes time off: the day he finishes editing the film is the day he starts writing the script for the next.

Bob Pollard, the lead singer and songwriter for Guided By Voices, says he never gets writer’s block because he never stops writing.

Ernest Hemingway would stop in the middle of a sentence at the end of his day’s work so he knew where to start in the morning.

Joni Mitchell says that whatever she feels like is the weak link in her last project gives her inspiration for the next.

Add them all together and you get a way of working I call “chain smoking.” You avoid stalling out in your career by never losing momentum.

Here’s how you do it: instead of taking a break in between projects and worrying about what’s next, use the end of one project to light up the next one.

More from Show Your Work! →

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