TO AVOID BEING DISAPPOINTED,
MINIMIZE EXPECTATIONS.
This series of video is from the book
I read "If you can talk you can write" by
JOEL SALTZMAN
THE FORTUNE COOKIE
THAT SAVED MY LIFE
One night, still in the throes of agonizing writer's block, I got a fortune cookie that saved my life. My fortune read:
TO AVOID BEING DISAPPOINTED,
MINIMIZE EXPECTATIONS.
Not being a true believer in the Fortune Cookie School of Wisdom, I was about to toss it aside, eat my cookie and never think of it again. But there was something about those words that almost made sense to me.
What if I did lower my expectations-really lowered them? What if I said to myself: "I don't care if it makes any sense or not. Whatever's in my head, I'm going to write it
down."
Suddenly, it hit me: That's how I started writing in the first place. I was eleven years old, banging away at an old Royal typewriter, not a worry in the world.
That night, I started writing again, the same way I'd started out as a kid-just for the hell of it. I was fooling around again, having fun on the page, finger painting with words and ideas. I didn't care how crazy, or wild,
or silly it got. It got me going again and that's all that mattered.
It wasn't great writing, but it was writing. The dry spell was over. Having lowered my expectations, I wasn't disappointed; I was elated.
I used to throw things out saying, "This isn't great." It didn't occur to me that it didn't have to be great.
-by William Saroyan
If you want me to continue
this whole chapter of this book
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Now, start writing in
lower expectations... Good Luck