emily: what if he wants dinner… not as friends

spencer: as enemies ????

— P. D. James

— Kurt Vonnegut

— Jane Goodall

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

-Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

I had a marvelous time ruining everything

http://www.instagram.com/mylittlebooktique/

#iconic

This is your random reminder!

I’ll say this to you, my friend, with all the love in my heart and all the wisdom of the universe. Take it sleazy. THE GOOD PLACE (2016-2020)

Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him.

We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.

Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince (2009)

#145: Creativity Doesn’t Have a Downside

An aspiring writer (or illustrator, or filmmaker, or musician) is a bit like a child with a box of legos but no instructions. And we all could learn a lot from how these kids work.

What do most children do when you hand them a box of plastic bricks? Do they watch a bunch of architecture videos? Do they sign up for a masterclass? Do they go away for a few months to think about it?

No! They just dump the entire box on the carpet and start building random things. When they don’t like where it’s going or the whole thing falls over, they just try building something else until they’re happy with it (or, well, get frustrated and lose interest).

A funny thing happens when you hand that same box of legos to an adult. What should they build? Are there enough bricks for a castle? And what about a spaceship? Hmm, would these flat bricks work as wings? What if it doesn’t work out? Things suddenly get a lot more serious.

The Lego bricks are a great example because there is no downside to breaking them apart and starting over. You can keep doing it over and over again until you grow tired of it.

But isn’t that the case for writing as well? If a story you wrote isn’t good enough, you can keep it to yourself and write a new one. It doesn’t cost anything. So why do we get so hung up on finding the right name for our characters, and the right plot twist for the second act? Why do we spend more time deciding what to write instead of actually writing? It really seems like the children know something that we don’t…

Creating something bad may seem like a waste of time, but the work you put in is never wasted. The story might go straight to the bin, but what you learn will stay with you for the rest of your life.

What these little people don’t have is ego. They don’t take it personally when something doesn’t work out. They just keep trying.

Perhaps the greatest creative challenge of all is getting out of your own way.

Want More?

My email subscribers receive a notification when I publish these posts along with a few things I found interesting or helpful on the literary internet every week. Click the link below to join the club.

SUBSCRIBE

(I won’t spam you or pass your email to a third party. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

Past Editions

HARRY POTTER: THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE (2001).