Dangerous Business

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." - J.R.R. Tolkien

I've always wanted to create something. Not just a painting to hang on my own wall or a poem that sits in a notebook and embarrasses me years down the road, but something that matters, that means something to someone other than me. The problem is, I never allow myself to finish a project because I'm afraid of what everyone else besides me will think of it.

When I set out to write my first novel in serial format on my blog, it sounded like the best idea in the world. In my head, I imagined gaining massive readership, interacting with fans of my work, and playing the game of good plot hooks and shocking twists with them week in and out. The only problem was that my readership was small, I was inconsistent, and I didn't have a direction for my story. What's worse, as the story revealed itself to me, I found myself increasingly stuck, having worked myself into corners in the previous installments that were frustratingly hard to work my way out of. As the story went on, I would realize things I had wrote previously no longer fit the story I wanted to tell. The result: I quickly fell out of love with the story and characters I had begun to create.

"But you can't give up," I told myself. "You have 10 readers and you've never been able to finish anything like this before. What will they think? If you stop now, you'll never finish anything. This time has to be different." Just the fact that I'm writing this blog, in part to defend why I'm moving away from the Time & Space project for a while, shows how deeply those insecurities are rooted. After weeks of forcing out mediocre chapters that I was dissatisfied with and feeling like I had lost control of my story, this self-antagonizing rhetoric continued. It wasn't until a conversation last week with my wife and our closest friends did I realize that, despite my grandiose daydreams, I wasn't going to be an author overnight. Sure, I could write my chapters and put them on my blog until I had some semblance of a book, but finishing a novel takes continuous tweaking and re-working and no one was forcing me to maintain this wacky and naive format but myself.

I left that conversation feeling liberated, but no sense of direction accompanied that freedom. I spent the next few days running from my sense of creative responsibility. Another chapter deadline passed and the same fears and insecurities began to whisper at the back of my mind. Maybe I should just keep forcing it out, I thought. It will be better to have a complete book that I hate than to have no book at all. But as I traveled further down this line of thinking, the more I procrastinated, and the more I began to resent sitting down to write. Then, an idea hit me.

If you know me very closely at all, you know that I draw an unreasonable amount of energy from the generation of ideas. Brainstorming is my favorite pastime. You'll catch me staring off into space at some point, and it's usually because I just came up with a great business model for a sports bar that specializes in all kinds of dips (Dipsh*ts is my working title, drop a line in the contact form if you want to get in on that foolproof plan). But seriously, I have two or three similar ideas pop into my head a day, and at some point about a year ago, I started writing the good ones down. So when I got caught in this headwind and I couldn't find my bearings this week, I dove into the sea of my ideas.

Long forgotten story ideas came rushing back to me, as exciting as they were when I first discovered them. Deeply interesting characters were there, waiting for their time to shine. Other creative projects, like a board game I have been meaning to flesh out for almost a year, called for attention once again. Time & Space was there, the original idea looks a lot different from the pieces that have manifested on my blog, but I realized I still like the story. My trip down Good Idea Lane rekindled something deeply creative in me that I had snuffed out by trying to force myself through Time & Space. I realized that the creative process, my creative process, is one that ebbs and flows with the tides of my ideas, and that's okay. I'm allowing myself to be comfortable with unfinished projects, and simply take joy in doing the creative work, whatever form it takes.

So, all that to say, I'm taking a new approach to how I create and publish the ideas that I'm working on. I will keep posting on my blog from time to time, but my plan is to post more writing like this: about my process, thoughts and feelings on creativity, and simple updates. As I create things, I will post snippets here and there, maybe a short story or two will make their way out in their completed and final form. I may even feel inspired to crank out a new chapter of Time & Space from time to time, who knows.

What I need from you, oh faithful reader and friend, is to hold me to it. If you've read this far, it is clear that you care and think I have something to offer. I chose the format for Time & Space that I did because I wanted the accountability, little did I know I was no match for the crippling insecurities that would cause me to resent writing all together. However, I am driven to create because I believe art has the power to teach, change, and improve each of us, and I want to know if you believe that too. So subscribe to my blog so you know if I'm sticking to my word and doing the work. Call me on it if I've been quiet for a while. Tell me what you like and don't like about what I'm creating or if you agree or disagree with what I'm saying. I won't pretend that I can achieve my creative goals without support (and challenge) from those who are invested in me.

So without further ado, I'm going out my door and onto the road. Creativity is a dangerous business, but I'm willing to be swept off into it.