“Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose — not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.” – Anne Sullivan

A couple weeks ago I wrote about resilience and that quitting something or changing direction should be included in our definition. I feel very strongly about this, but to be honest, I still struggle with it in my real world life. Case in point – I’ve been slogging after an idea for a book that…well…just isn’t coming together.

Every writer I’ve talked to or listened to or read about will say that your first draft is always garbage. Like…not just “needs improvement” but it will be bad, bad. The practice is to get words on the pages and to get the story moving. So I’ve been operating with that mindset for the past few months. In fact, I’ve written 30,000 words of garbage in three months! No matter what, that’s an accomplishment.

But the past few weeks I’ve been struggling to even put words on the page. Because I am trying to be consistent in my efforts, I’ve dutifully written 1,000 words every Tuesday and Thursday per my self-imposed schedule. 2,000 words a week at minimum is the plan. Yet every day that I sit down with my manuscript, I’m groaning internally and desperately looking for something else to do. Hence why my bathtub got new caulk last week.

As I’ve been toiling away and sticking to this schedule, another idea has taken root and started to grow in my mind. A better idea for a book. Something more interesting to me, something that I know better than what I’m currently writing. But I’ve been dismissing it because I’m trying to maintain the discipline to finish the story I’m working on. Trying to “stick with it.”

Finally I mentioned this to Tyler and, as an artist himself, he has a completely different perspective than I do. He is frequently starting pieces and setting them aside to start something else, before coming back to the original piece with fresh eyes to finish it. He made a comment that the general public would be surprised at how many unfinished pieces artists usually have in their studios. Sometimes starting something give you an idea for the next thing and that’s as far as it goes. It served it’s purpose as inspiration but it was never destined to be a completed piece.

I think the mental switch for me is to start thinking of myself as an artist more than a worker. As a worker in an office you don’t create from inspiration, you create from necessity or at the direction of someone else. Right now I am trying to create from inspiration, so it doesn’t make sense to be too rigid about an idea if it isn’t inspiring. This isn’t to say it won’t be work. It’s the idea I wrote about last week (Authenticity vs. Consistency) that we must have some discipline and consistency in order to accomplish anything. But, I think toiling away at a bad idea and ignoring a better story isn’t being authentic enough to what I’m trying to do.

This week I started outlining my new book and already I feel more engaged with this idea! It’s going to require a lot of research and strategy to make it happen how I want, so it feels good to be excited about something that I think is going to end up being more work. More to come as I process everything and make progress.