Impulse

Getting back into writ­ing is a bit like hit­ting a base­ball. When you hit the ball, you’re not really sure why you hit it; you just know it felt really good. The next time you’re up, you try to do every­thing exactly the same — tap the plate on the right cor­ner, shift weight from left to right, tug the cap, shrug the shoul­ders, two prac­tice swings, and think exactly the same thoughts you had last time. Swing and a miss.

Trying to recre­ate that hit never works. The harder you try, the more you miss, and the more frus­trated you become. If you let that frus­tra­tion get to you, you won’t hit a thing. Swing and a miss, strike two.
But: if you blow off the feel­ing and just keep swing­ing — not even car­ing if you hit the ball — you’ll start hit­ting the ball again. Your body auto­mat­i­cally starts get­ting bet­ter. Eventually, you’re hit­ting it fairly often and you start think­ing about how to place your hit where you want. You still miss occa­sion­ally, but you accept that — nobody hits the ball per­fectly, nobody. The best bat­ting aver­ages in his­tory are still less than 50%, after all.
I’m sure there’s some­thing zen about it. It’s amaz­ing that I haven’t seen any smil­ing, saffron-clad monks at the plate lately. Shaolin Baseball, any­one?
It’s the same with writ­ing. The last story I wrote flowed so eas­ily, it felt more like record­ing than writ­ing. Then, I took too long of a break and got a lit­tle rusty. Returning to the key­board, I kept miss­ing the ball. I let it get to me and couldn’t write any­thing. Then, I stopped wor­ry­ing, and just started writ­ing — emails to friends, lit­tle scene sketches that popped into mind, any­thing. Ideas began to pop up faster than I could write about them. After a while, I noticed, “Hey, I’m writ­ing again!”.
As every­one in base­ball knows: when you’re 0 and 2, swing away.
Why is this? If you think about it, it’s com­pletely strange: the more you try, the more you fail; the less you try, the more you suc­ceed. It’s the usual sus­pects: over-thinking, fear, and that eter­nal neme­sis of cre­ativ­ity: the word “no”.
I’m con­vinced that the brain is not the ori­gin of cre­ative work, at least not the left side. My work is best when I’m not think­ing at all. When I start think­ing, I start ana­lyz­ing, cri­tiquing, dis­sect­ing. This puts my brain in con­trol with the implicit assump­tion that through rigor & will, my brain will instruct me on how to per­form the cre­ative act. It’s like work­ing for an over­bear­ing, micro-managing boss. Creativity comes from think­ing side­ways, tak­ing alter­na­tive paths. It depends on a lack of con­trol.
Missing the ball makes you won­der why you missed. You start think­ing & ana­lyz­ing. Self-consciousness and rigid­ity arrive, muscling cre­ativ­ity out. Soon fear joins in throw­ing punches — fear that you’ll never hit the ball or make any­thing cool again. I know that fear is the pri­mary fuel for my frus­tra­tion. Then you start get­ting crit­i­cal of you work and method­ol­ogy. You start say­ing no. The word “no” kills cre­ativ­ity. It imposes lim­its on a process that desires no lim­its. You try and you fail.
When you stop wor­ry­ing & learn to love your slump, you don’t ask why you missed. Over-thinking isn’t ini­ti­ated. Because you’re expect­ing to miss, fear has no foothold. Because misses & hits are equally accepted, the word “no” isn’t even at the game. Home run, baby.
So, whether my lit­tle league coaches were wise or just lucky, their words are true: “just swing away.”

Related posts:

1. Turning my brain off
2. Leaving a lit­tle ink in the well
3. Happy Birthday: I’m 2 years old!
4. Being of two minds