Lean Startup Principle For Your Writing

One of the biggest obstacles to your writing is your own voice telling you what you are doing is wrong. It is loud, unrelenting, and until you learn to either silence or ignore the bastard, you'll just fight on. 

Here's the rub: You'll never silence it. You may get better at mitigating its affect, but it will always be there, constantly evolving to find that weakness in you that will make you stop writing. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. I have an idea that may help, but to help understand it, let's take a lesson from Lean Startup principles. Specifically the MVP, Minimum Viable Product. From theleanstartup.com

A core component of Lean Startup methodology is the build-measure-learn feedback loop
In terms of writing an MVP sounds like a shoddy work, and it may be, but I would like to see about applying the MVP methodology to an earlier process; specifically the 1st and 2nd draft, to build out that feedback loop. What if, as a writer, you had a host of anonymous readers you could share your first chapters with. Not for an editorial or critique read, but rather: "Here is an idea of story. Does this capture you as a reader?" And with it a rating, like 0 stars for "that was painful" to 5 stars "oh hell yeah! Me want more!" If you get a 4 or 5 you should be able to quiet that voice, at least for a while, and write that damn book. If you get a 0 or 1, time to re-evaluate. Maybe there could a be a critique section for the readers to explain why such a low score. Of course if you do get a 0 or 1 that voice will only get louder. I don't have an answer for that other than write better. I realize now this is a stupid idea as I'll just be getting 0's and 1's. There's that voice again...

Eric is one of the Podcasters at @typehammer and you can follow his writing adventure on twitter @elmwriting