But have you ever considered exactly what it was that made Michelangelo so great?

Was it his creative genius? His relationship with powerful and influential people such as the Pope? His ability to organize massive projects such as the painting of the Sistine Chapel?

All of those factors surely played a part in his greatness. But above all, Michelangelo was a guy who got things done. He finished projects and saw them through to completion.

Contrast this with his contemporary, and creative rival, Leonardo da Vinci. Even though da Vinci had a wider array of creative interests, and he had one of the most fertile minds in history, he often left projects half-finished. As anyone can see in his famous notebooks, da Vinci was a guy who had lots of great ideas but struggled to translate them into practical reality.

Michelangelo once said, “I saw an angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.” We like to focus on the angel in the marble, but let’s not forget about the part where he kept carving until the angel was set free. Marble is a hard substance. It took Michelangelo four whole years working on his 16-foot statue of David until it was done.

But he eventually finished and moved on to the next project. That’s a great lesson for all of us writers working on big projects. You keep showing up every day, carving, and making a little progress. Then one day, almost like magic, you’ll be finished. That book you’ve been working on, that little angel, will sprout wings and finally fly.

Question: What project do you need to keep carving until it’s set free?

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One of the tropes that seems to follow creative types around is the myth of the “tortured artist.” The myth goes something like this: creative work is very, very difficult, and it requires the artist to give their blood, sweat, and tears to their creative work.

This tortured artist myth has been used to describe why so many creative types are depressed or otherwise messed up. And if you look at the number of popular musical artists from the 1970s and 80s who died from a drug overdose, it almost seems to be a real phenomenon that great artists are indeed tortured souls.

But where does this myth come from? We don’t have time for a long history lesson here, but here is one explanation for why creative types, including writers, like to perpetuate this myth.

The reason is because we want to believe the work is hard. We like the idea that the creative work we are doing is extraordinarily difficult.

But what if we took the opposite approach? What if we assumed that writing is fun, easy, and enjoyable? Creativity experts often talk about getting into a state of “flow”—a mental state where we let our subconscious creative mind take over, and we are so focused and lost in our work that time seems to speed up. Hours go by without us even noticing it.

It’s hard to get into a state of flow if we constantly believe that our writing feels like torture. Yes, writing can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to feel like hard work. As Neil Gaiman said, “This is how you do it: You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.”

So the next time you write, assume that you will have a great time doing your work. Assume that it will be easy but challenging. You might even find yourself getting into a state of flow as you put one word after another.

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