So, my last post was about how I’m going to write this genealogy app, right? Beyond, as it turns out, is a fairly difficult project with lots of spiky hurdles and design challenges growling at me. A few days ago I was staring straight into the maw of this slavering beast, my eyes open to how hard it’s going to be to actually pull this off.
And I got scared. Overwhelmed. My next thought: “You know, I’ve abandoned this project before. Like, five times. I can abandon it again.”
But then (and thankfully there is a “but” here) as I was walking home later that day, I was visited by the first of three epiphanies. (Hmm, this is starting to sound a little like Dickens’ Christmas Carol.)
Epiphany #1: Writing Beyond will be hard. Very. Hard.
Corollary #1: It’s still worth it.
As usually happens in these cases, supporting evidence quickly rallied to my side.
Exhibit A: After dinner, I was reading Seth Godin’s book Small Is the New Big and came across an essay on hard work. “It’s hard work to invent a new system, service, or process that’s remarkable,” he said, and it grabbed me by the collar and shook me, because that’s exactly what I’m trying to do with Beyond.
Exhibit B: My friend Janssen told me about an article on the perils of praising your children — if you tell a child they’re smart, it actually inspires them (despires them?) to underachieve, whereas if you tell them they’re a hard worker, they do better. That’s the story of my life, folks. People told me I was smart, and as a result, whenever I ran into something that I couldn’t coast through easily, I gave up almost immediately. I put too much trust in innate talent (which may or may not have been there at all) and almost completely ignored effort. This is a recipe for failure. Edison was right: it’s 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
We now turn to the epiphany of Creativity Present. As a brief bit of backstory, I’m about 15,000 words into the first draft of Tanglewood, my young adult fantasy novel. Last week I decided to put it on hold so I could focus on writing short stories, because they’re shorter and thus easier (in my mind, anyway). Then on Wednesday I was walking home and had yet another epiphanic visit:
Epiphany #2: Writing Tanglewood will be hard.
Corollary #2: It’s still worth it.
I’m sensing a theme here. I decided that yes, writing a novel is something I really want to do, and jumping ship now isn’t going to help my goal. So I’m going to write short stories after I finish the book.
The third epiphany, tall and cloaked, came yesterday — also while I was walking home. (Seriously, my best thinking time is while walking home from work. And in the shower.) As you may have noticed, I’m an artist (with a very, very lowercase ‘a’). I like making art. But I’m not very good at drawing, particularly at drawing anything that remotely resembles a human. And I’ve been stuck at the same level for a very long time.
Epiphany #3: Learning to draw will be hard.
Corollary #3: It’s still worth it.
In retrospect this all sounds completely obvious, but dang, I’ve wasted a lot of time avoiding hard work — and I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I’ve been evading the hard stuff by doing easier things, or by telling myself that I wasn’t cut out for art or that I shouldn’t spend my time programming when I really should be spending my time doing x, y, or z.
Bzzt.
Lesson Learned #1: Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.
Lesson Learned #2: Worthwhile things take effort. Always.
Lesson Learned #3: Recognizing that it’ll be hard somehow makes it easier.
Lesson Learned #4: Doing things that stretch my skills is exhilarating.
So I’m going to forge onward with Beyond, keep writing Tanglewood, and practice drawing humans until they look real and not like hobgoblins with elephantitis.
And yes, I know I’m sort of bending the actual meaning of the word “corollary.” :)
