Day 75

Day 75:

The hardest part of any creative process, especially ones that you are not familiar with, is to start. 

To write the first sentence, get the first take, to pick up and use the instrument for the first time. This is true each time we stop a project, and then have to begin doing it again, at all levels. If you are in the flow of writing, but then suddenly have to go and answer the door, then your flow will be broken, and it can be difficult to get back into. The more time there is between stopping and starting again, the harder this is to overcome. If you leave a project for hours or more, then it can be difficult to remember exactly where you left off, let alone what you were thinking about. As the barrier grows higher, more and more effort is required to clear it. Therefore, the longer something is left, the less likely you are to return to it.

This idea seems to be one of the main reasons why so many books (and other projects) go unfinished: the writer is taken away from the project for a significant time, and things about them and their lives change. Even if they are able to return to the project, then it is not the same person who is sitting down to continue it. Their views, resources, experience or objectives for writing may have changed, creating a dissonance between what has already been created, and what will be created. 

If the creator doesn't like what they have already made, then they have three options: they can carry on with the rest of the project that they don't like parts of, they can go back and heavily edit what they have done (or even start over completely), or walk away completely. If they choose to push on, they will likely grow to resent or even despise their own work very quickly. This can degrade their self-esteem and is not a sustainable way to create something. Even if they do finish the project, the outcome will likely be nowhere near their potential, causing disappointment and discouraging them from trying again. To go back and change so much is a huge and daunting task, especially since it is not a new task to add to the collection of things that you have achieved, you are scrubbing away and replacing things that you have already created. Both of these options are not good ones to consider, and are even harder to follow through on, making walking away seem to be the most logical and appealing. 

However, this option is the worst in the long term. It is inevitable that we will all be pulled away from our projects at some point, especially by significant life events. If someone were to keep starting new projects every time, but moving on from them before they were finished, then all they have is a huge collection of beginnings. And whether they wrote them or not, all projects have an ending, even if that ending is being left on a hard-drive and thrown away. 

Without consistency, I know for a fact that I would never have gotten to Day 75. Whilst I've not been thinking about it constantly (I don't really think of an idea until I sit down to write), the knowledge that I need to write, and now the desire to do so, is always at the back of my mind. The barrier to overcome never gets too big. My inspiration for this piece came from me sitting in front of the white screen for about 20 minutes before any words came out, but I knew that I was going to sit here until something came out that was legible. And it did, eventually. 

For making sure that you get to do the things you want to do, and don't leave gaps longer than you intend to, I'd highly recommend keeping a diary or bullet journal. They can sound like a lot of effort, and they are for the first couple of days, but it can quickly become therapeutic to write to yourself each day. Maybe that's why I enjoy doing this so much...