Scott Andrew - lo-fi acoustic pop superhero!

Over at Worthwhile (strangely, one of my favorite new reads) Anita Sharpe recalls how John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote most of the Beatles’ catalog in daily, three-hour sessions:

“John and I would sit down and by then it might be one or two o’clock, and by four or five o’clock we’d be done. Three hours is about right, you start to fray at the edges after that. . .We always wrote a song a day, whatever happened we always wrote a song a day. And after that I’d pack up and drive back home and go out for the evening and that was it.”

The lesson to draw from this is that a creative breakthrough — or any great work, for that matter — doesn’t come from working non-stop, even at something you love, any more than it comes from waiting around for lightning to strike. The secret is putting in a few consistent, quality hours, every day.

Something to consider as I enter my third week of writer’s block.