When should you start a new endeavor?
D) Sometime in the future?
Needless to say, all four of the above answers are incorrect.
A) How would you ever truly know when the time time is right?
B) Similar to “A” but even harder to qualify; how do you know you can do something until you actually do it?
C) If the right time to do something was always in the past, we would never start anything new.
D) How many times has someone thought the right time would be later and yet, when it is later, the time still is right?
No, the best answer is almost always today. Today is the day we are in, the day we have some control over and the day the idea/feeling to create/begin is usually strongest. Besides, putting off what we hope or want to achieve today until later usually leads to regrets; i.e. missed chances and forgotten ideas.
It is in this spirit of carpe diem that I do now what I have told my students to do for the past decade: just start writing; make it better later.
Teaching Learning Learning Teaching 