Productivity closes the gap between vision and realization
We come to writing because we have something to say. And most of us spend the rest of our lives learning how to say it. In this quick video, Ira Glass talks about the gap between the impulse to create and the ability to realize our vision. He shares an insight that he says he wishes he knew at the beginning of his journey: everyone who eventually makes great creative work spends many years making mediocre work first. Everyone.
The most important thing you can do for your craft, says Glass, is to create a huge volume of work. Just keep doing it and doing it and doing it. It’s the only way to close the gap. I agree with him completely.
Understanding that honing our craft is a lifelong discipline is a valuable point of orientation. But I think this insight is not enough to keep us writing. We need to be very clear about our motivation, and to call ourselves back to that motivation when we get discouraged, lost, afraid.
If you think your motivation is to get published, I invite you to dig deeper. Publishing may happen at some point on the trajectory. But the validation of the outer world is unstable ground on which to construct our writing practice.
I started writing as a teenager because it felt like my life depended on it. And I continued writing because the quest to translate experience into insight became a kind of obsession. Finding the right language to liberate truth has been my primary quest in life.
Why do you write? How is writing essential to your happiness? How is it fundamental to your survival? I invite you to name and claim your deepest and truest and most vulnerable motivation. Write down your answers and keep them close at hand as you write. Living and writing by these truths will fortify your inner writer over the years. And it can help ensure that your writing practice is so essential to you that the obvious choice will be to keep writing and writing and writing. No matter what.
When you’re writing from the inside out, the act of writing will become its own reward. You’ll find the resources to commit to your practice for the long term. And as you see the gap between vision and realization close over time, you may find that your evolution as a writer gives you a kind of satisfaction that you once believed could only come from publishing.
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If you’d like a little extra support clarifying your motivation and sustaining momentum in your writing life and you live in the Portland, Oregon area, join us for the Finding Your Stride workshop! Christi Krug, guest Laura Stanfill and I will be sharing our best strategies to help you make 2014 your most potent writing year yet! Classes start March 4. Learn more and register.
