The consistently inspiring online writer Brennan Brown ‘confesses’ to being a compulsive worker.

“Twenty sheets a day, or 2,000 words, or one essay every single day for eleven straight years… I don’t know if any of it is good, in the way Tellado’s editors meant good or the way Cervantes meant it when he called Lope a prodigy of nature. But I know the not-writing feels worse than the writing, and apparently that’s been true of every obsessive scribbler since at least the Spanish Golden Age, and there’s something comforting in that lineage. We’re not well, certainly. But we’re not alone, either.” — Compulsion – the writers who wrote the most in history

This compulsion to express oneself put me in mind of Coreta Kent’s rule number 6:

“Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail. There’s only make.” – Coreta Kent’s Ten Rules for artists

It’s not so much that consistency beats quality. More that consistency is what produces quality. But even before the desire to make good work comes the simple urge to make something.

I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri. The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now.