Like everyone who drives a car fueled by gasoline, I just topped off my tank and paid more per gallon than I have ever paid in my life.

Will the price I just paid look like a bargain by the end of the summer?

By the end of the summer, will the government force us to pay for gas using crypto?

I miss life when crypto was a dog.

We could all use some inspiration right now. To help myself and other writers, I’ve gone looking for words of encouragement from people who aren’t writers. Borrow from the best!

First up is the mistress of mail art, Melissa Hughes, who works with rubber stamps:

People often tell me they are waiting for inspiration or worse waiting for a “good idea,” as opposed to just an idea that maybe could be made good if it was allowed to be born, but we try to edit in the thinking stage and all that does is shut one down. I used to wait for inspiration, but that is kind of like waiting until it rains to get water to drink.

Don Carr, who died in 1993 and left us with his dreams, was a master of rubber stamps and colored pencils. Don was not afraid of showing up at his desk, grabbing his tools, and going for it. Go in the wrong direction? So what? “The mistake is sometimes more interesting than the intended impression,” he once said.

Babe Ruth would’ve known what Don meant. The Babe believed that every swing and a miss brought him closer to his next homerun.

The fear of error

This brings us to the late Chuck Yungkurth, an engineer by trade and a lover of trains, who wrote an essay with that title for Model Railroader in January 1978. Yungkurth had noticed something he couldn’t understand at his model train club: Armchair modelers. These men claimed they were enjoying the hobby in their own way:

I am skeptical. The stacks of kits and equipment are bound to be depressing. The number of times these would-be modelers turn up disposing everything at the annual auctions in our club leads me to believe that is the ultimate end for these people. The solution is to plan and theorize to a point—and then start construction.

But what if you screw up? Guess what, you will screw up. Babe Ruth knew that strikes are just part of the game. “Model railroading is a hands-on, learn-by-doing business,” Yungkurth wrote. “All really fine modelers can tell horror stories of early blunders…yet all consider these part of the learning process.”

I have to include one writer in this post, so I’m cuing up Garrison Keillor. According to our man Yungkurth, “there are almost no errors or mistakes that cannot be rectified, nor are there any real penalties for failure.” Keillor agrees: “Be bold, thrust forward, and have the courage to fail. After all, it’s only writing. Nobody is going to die for our mistakes or even lose their teeth.”

“Do something—do anything—and don’t be afraid of making mistakes,” Yungkurth wrote. Stop waiting for inspiration, my friend Melissa says. Mistakes might be interesting, and they’ll certainly teach you something, Don Carr knew.

The only secret: Show up at your desk.

• Fifteen minutes a day.
• Two hours a day, two days a week.
• Early every morning or late every night.
• “Daily writing and one day off”: One of my teachers, Merridawn Duckler.

There’s a schedule that will work for you. You’ll know it when you find it.

Chuck Yungkurth: “Better small than not at all.” This is Tango’s interpretation of me revising my novel. I type; she chews.