Beginnings

Whatever works—do that

There’s a feeling right when an idea is about to tip over into becoming an actuality. The balance point where it is about to change, but hasn’t yet. The zero card in traditional tarot, The Fool, portrays a figure just about to lift their foot off the ground in a step which will carry them off solid land and into air. To fall? To float? To fly? Unknown. That period you know that it’s time to take the step, to make the thing in your mind into a thing in the world, can come with a feeling of instability which is both thrilling and deeply uncomfortable.

If at that moment, you decided it was a great time to [insert practical and long-overdue household task here], you would not be alone.

One of the most fascinating things about all art to me is the transformative passage of an idea from a creative mind, through a practiced skill, into a form perceivable by others. (Even the word “idea” is more actual than the inchoate mist that the idea often begins from, but “idea” is less pretentious than anything else I can come up with, so I’m going with that.)

The first steps through that passage are often completely internal: just letting the thing exist in potentiality, thinking about it, hearing a sentence or two flit through the mind. It’s tempting to remain in this internal part of the passage for a long, long time. When all is potential, the thing can exist in all it’s potential glory. One can imagine it complete and marvelous and revel in what a tremendous and exciting idea it is. One is a genius in the idea stage! All is possible.

Also, when it exists only in potentiality, it’s a lot easier to make it fit with the rest of life. Just think about it in the car! While washing dishes! Text it to a friend.

The collision of idea with practiced skill can be a real downer.

Now, maybe it isn’t such a downer if you’re operating within a range you’ve mastered. There’s a point in the process where you get to enjoy your abilities. Resting on one’s laurels, it is not; brilliant art is made by people who have landed in the wonderful place where their skill meets their vision like a friend and gets merrily to work.

If you are in that place, yay for you! That feels great.

But when you are beginning something new—really new, a thing that still feels outside of your grasp—it can feel shitty. Impossible to find the way in. So clunky and awful. It can seem so impossible that the thing-in-reality will ever measure up the the thing-in-potential, and one can be forgiven for wanting to avoid trying to do an impossible thing.

But as the marvelous Stephen Koch says in my all-time favorite writing craft book, The Modern Library Writers Workshop:

"The only way to begin is to begin, and begin right now. If you like, begin the minute you finish reading this paragraph. ... I have no doubt the day is coming when you will be wiser or better informed or more highly skilled than you are now, but you will never be more ready to begin writing than you are right this minute."

This is a time to be gentle with yourself. (I would argue that one should always be gentle with oneself; the world is hard enough as it is. But especially in the beginnings.)

Start in the lowest-stakes way: no commitment, no audience, no witnesses. Total deniability. The smallest possible baby-step. Write a paragraph, a sentence, even a single word. Or even just open a file. Seriously. Tell yourself that is all you need to do to begin.

Then give yourself a giant pat on the back for whatever it is you were able to do. Because you know what? It wasn’t Nothing! Go do your reward-thing—watch TV, eat spaghetti, spike up your dopamine!—because the step you just took is huge.

Do the same thing again the next day, and the next. Soon enough there will be a little dirt path and you won’t have to struggle so much to find the way in.