Are You A Writer? Take The Starbuck’s Test!
Take this simple test.
Go to the closest Starbuck’s, bring your laptop or writing tablet, get a coffee or tea, start writing, and don’t stop until an hour transpires.
Can you do it?
If so, I believe you have what it takes to be a writer!
Granted, this seems like a weird test, and yes, I’ve passed it many times, but I believe there’s an interesting standard in this exercise.
Writing when distracted means several things:
(1) You can focus, and this is a powerful requirement for any writer, a novelist, journalist, or screen scribe.
(2) You can get into the zone at will, that marvelous place that athletes and aesthetes go to find their calmness, where things become frictionless, and easy peasy.
(3) You can write on a deadline, and this is an incredible ability when you’re working against the clock to get your manuscript to an editor who needs it yesterday.
(4) You can produce without being inspired. This is not only essential, it overcomes one of the alibis writers use to rationalize not writing.
(5) You’ll prove the counterintuitive truth that quality emerges by itself from quantity, which I discuss at length in my audio program: “The Law of Large Numbers.”
If you wait until conditions are perfect in which to write, you may be waiting for a long, long time. So, try the Starbuck’s test, and see how you do!
Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com
