Don't Think!

My darkest hours as a writer are those when I am unhappy with what I've written some days before and try to improve it. I rewrite, erase, rewrite again, erase once more, start anew. After some paragraphs I find that the new writing is worse than what I had. Then I ask myself: Have I lost all my talent? And if I lost it, why can't I at least fake being a writer after all those years of experience? Wrong questions, wrong answers. I'm best when I write from my heart, and what you write that way can't be improved by smart thinking. It took me a long time to understand Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451, who warned me: "Don't think! Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It is self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things."