You don't have to write about EVERYTHING or have it all figured out before you write...

"...one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments.... It reminds me that all I have to do is write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame."

"E. L. Doctorow once said that 'writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.... "

"...thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. ...he was at the kitchen table close to tears,... Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.' "- Anne Lamott