I've had to take an extra break here due to sickness (and what a time to take a break!), but I read something a few days ago that's stuck in my head. It's from this article by David Moldawer about how your technique will never be good enough (meaning that's not a reason to stop creating):
"If it's not an experiment," Schütte writes, "why bother?" Any new work is an experiment. How can any experiment be executed perfectly? What you're about to write hasn't ever been written before, right? That means no one's ever read it. Therefore, you have no way of knowing for certain how it should be received, let alone how it will. How can you perfect your approach to making something no one's ever made before?
I have spent a significant amount of my writing time worrying about finding the perfect words, the perfect characters, the perfect plot—worrying so much that I often don't write at all. I know I am not alone in this.
And that's why this stuck in my head. The story I'm working on is an experiment. It's literally never been told before, and nobody knows how it should be told. How could they?
And so... how could I possibly know?
The only way to figure out how to tell the story is to put words on the page and see what it's like. Try things. Change things.
Experiment.
It's almost freeing when you think about it like that.
That's a great way of looking at things. Reminds me of when I was playing with my nephew, who was hunched over a pile of Lincoln Logs. I asked him what he was making, and he said, "How can I know until I've finished?" And then he turned out this perfect biplane, which I still keep on a shelf to remind me to just play around with stuff and see what happens.
ReplyDeleteSo much wisdom in one so young! Lincoln Logs are great. 😆
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