Swoop, declutter, do
View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) “What you are thinking about, you are becoming.” Muhammad Ali Kurt Vonnegut once said there are two kinds of writers in this world: swoopers and bashers.
Swoopers work quickly to turn ideas into words and fix later on what doesn’t work.
Bashers, on the other hand “go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.”
I’ll let you in on a little secret, |NAME|.
I used to be a basher. I stopped for two reasons.
On the practical side, it took up far too much of my time to labour over every line, and that gets expensive when you’re in the words business.
But the second reason was even more important.
The longer I took to write something, the more opportunities I gave myself to listen to that persistent little voice inside: the one that invited me to second-guess whether the thing I was working on was worth doing.
Too often, I’d either abandon an idea or end up writing draft after draft, behaving as though I was on some kind of mission to achieve perfection. As if such a thing were even possible. I mean what was I thinking, really?
The better way of creating anything–words, music, art, whatever it is that moves you–is to be deliberate in finishing what you start.
Stop being so precious about the process, about the value of the work, or dwelling too much about what others will think of it when it’s done.
Only yours until you let it go
You have no control over what happens to anything after you’ve done your best and you’ve released it into the world.
I heard a good interview with Noel Gallagher of Oasis a little while ago in which he spoke frankly about the night he wrote Don’t Look Back in Anger (https://vimeo.com/11009372 ) in his hotel room in the mid-1990s.
He said that if he had any idea at the time that he was in the process of writing a hit song that he’d be closing concerts with for the next 20 years, he’d never have been able to finish writing it. The weight of expectations would have been too much to bear. But, he added, “I don’t overthink anything I do.”
Resist Resistance
Don’t get caught up in every feeling that passes over you as you work. This is how we suffocate so many of our best ideas.
“Beyond a certain point there is no return,” Franz Kafka reminds us. “This point has to be reached.”
Stay true to the thought that compelled you to start your project. See it through to the end by knowing where to park your self-doubt: not in the excuses you invent inviting you to stop.
Instead, declutter your feelings. By all means, create from an emotional place, but be deliberate in how you use your feelings to colour your work.
Emotions and self-judgement don’t have to define your work. But they can season things just right, if you allow it.
Very best, Patrick
P.S. The finest compliment you can pay me is when you refer or forward CreativeBoost to a friend.
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