There's a story the late author Tom Wolfe told about his first magazine article, for Esquire magazine. The magazine had flown the young writer to LA to report on the car culture there, putting him up in a luxury hotel and sparing no expense, including paying a photographer $10,000 to document the scene even before seeing the copy. <\/p>\n
At the end of a week, Wolfe sat down to write and found himself unable to even begin. After procrastinating most of an evening, he called editor Byron Dobell to tell him he's unable to finish the piece. Dobell instructs Wolfe to just type up his notes then and send them along \u2013 he'll get another writer to do it.<\/p>\n
Freed of the burdens of grammar and style, a newly energized and unencumbered Wolfe begins: "Dear Byron", speed types 49 pages of notes randomly punctuated, finishes at 4 am and sends off the mess of papers before going to bed.<\/p>\n
When he calls Byron to see how he made out, Byron tells him he loved what Wolfe sent and, after removing "Dear Byron", ran the piece as submitted, punctuation and all. And so was born Gonzo Journalism and a career.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to the take-home point, succinctly summarized here by sci-fi author Ray Bradbury and understood at some level by creatives everywhere:<\/p>\n
Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.<\/em><\/p>\n
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