TV shows and movies will show the writer or genius with a trashcan full of crumpled up papers. These are drafts that are discarded after countless fruitless attempts at greatness. These stories often end with the protagonist making a great breakthrough. The story beats do their job and move along the story. In addition to these scenes moving along many a good story, they are making me think. They are making me think about how my trashcan is mostly empty. I am starting to wonder if I should be filling that metaphorical trashcan with more stuff?
These days my most productive form of art is writing. I am writing a variety of things of a variety of lengths, my writing is a bit all over the place in a multitude of ways. One common variable is that once I jump into writing something, I tend to work at it until I get something useful out of it. For the most part if I start something I finish it, I don’t very often delete it and say “well that didn’t work…” I am starting to think this might be a flaw. I feel as though I am losing too many opportunities.
I think I worry too many times about finishing writing pieces I start. Some pieces should be played with and discarded. I don’t do that. If I don’t have a strong idea of where I might go with things, I don’t start. I am starting to think if I experimented more and just tried I might end up with more final products to release. It’s not really about how much trash I create its about how many good things I create. A truth in my life has been that I never know where good things will come from. I am likely missing opportunities because I don’t write enough, so why do I do it?
Too often I think I view discarding a writing piece as failure. It is not failure it is process. Success is more about creating the most good stuff possible, not limiting “failures.” I think ego is coming into play too much for me. I don’t want to say that I wrote something that was garbage. I allow the losses to hurt more than the victories feel good. I can still throw the bad stuff out, writing is not publishing. This arrogance is setting me back, and should be purged.
Going forward, I feel I should view the trashcan as simply a step on my hero’s journey. Filling the trashcan means I will be filling the blog with good things as well. Process matters and I must remove the ego from the process. Singers get judged on their hit songs, not all the songs that didn’t hit. By adopting this attitude I can string together more hits.