Grace and Work
I'm a little scattered as I sit down this morning because yesterday was one of those days that was going absolutely perfectly... and then I had too many cups of coffee or some food that had sat in the fridge for too long and my entire evening turned into misery.
I had a lot of plans for last night. A lot of people that I wanted to talk to, co-op games I was planning to play. It was a friend's birthday. And I felt bad about curling up in a chair, sipping water until it didn't hurt to drink, and being.
And you have to accept that that's part of the curveballs of life.
I'm making these posts and videos as I'm working out a couple of creative writing courses. I've got one of them that's just starting to release, but I've got a lot of production in the background, and another bit I should have released first. But there's a moment in one of them that we're workshopping together right now
The next video that I have to record for my course on starting your creative work, I haven't got to yet in part because it's a video about figuring out which pieces of what you're doing are effective and which parts need to be rethought or just dropped. That's an important part of the process.
The thing you want to watch out for is trying to find a way to identify which parts of your creative work are effective, which parts feed you, which parts feed you even though they're woefully ineffective, and which parts maybe you're ready to let go of. All of those goals are tied in with learning to judge what is a curveball in the moment, what is a repeated pattern you need to work on, and what are the absolutely perfect conditions in which to work.
Because you're never gonna have the perfect conditions in which to work every day for the rest of your life.
I could have not sat down and recorded this morning because I'm feeling still a little under the weather, but for me the consistency of sharing the process of making creative projects happen, making farm projects happen is an important part of my morning. It's part of the process and in many ways process can be as fascinating as the product.
And that's where consistency and coming out here and recording even though I feel kind of gross is about the same as when you wake up in the morning and you stare at that coffee pot. Those days when you stumble out into the kitchen and just look at that coffee pot and you go, "No. No, I want to go back to bed."
And then you don't go to bed.
You make the coffee.
You drink it.
You start your day.
There are certainly times that we need to be more gentle with ourselves and that's the thing I'm absolutely working on.
But that routine, that habit, that time in that you take for yourself, especially if it doesn't infringe on others in your home and you're taking a moment that would otherwise possibly be spent in existential agony and instead, spending that moment performing the narrative alchemy of taking whatever you're feeling and turning it into something new.
I feel it also has something to do with my drive to avoid perfection. It's a new thing. I used to be a perfectionist. I probably still am a perfectionist. But a lot of the work that I'm doing now I could have been doing ten years ago, if I had the appropriate context and if I had picked this direction to work in instead of writing novels, but that would have changed a lot of my views on storytelling.
And so ultimately a lot of it comes down to the choice. That choice to do what you need to do. Even if you feel bad, even if you're having to make the excuse of saying, "Oh, I'm going to bed," and go to bed a little bit earlier than usual and spend half an hour to an hour sketching, journaling, designing that video game you've always wanted to design, and then putting it down and not letting it take you all the way into the night. As much as that creative flow is glorious, you can't depend on creative flow state. Just like you can't depend on the day continuing well through one more cup of coffee or one leftover salad that might have been a day too old.
So I'll leave you today, folks, with probably a quieter moment than I have been for the last week. I think the main point that I'm trying to get to is to give yourself grace when you feel bad and when plans have to change and when life throws twists at you. But in giving yourself that grace, also see if you can find the space and structure to keep doing what you need to do, instead of blowing in the wind.