Not Trying is Trying

Whenever I finish a big project like a novel a part of me is unnerved. I wonder if I have another story in me. Or I’ll ask myself—are my stories worth telling? Eventually I choose a direction to move in. Characters start to emerge. A storyline begins poking through the detritus. I’ll read a few books. I’ll watch a few movies. And then I think—I’m ready for the big dive. Because why not? I’m a writer! How hard can it be?

Very… actually.

There’s this story I once heard, about the child of a famous writer who fondly remembers the soothing clackity clack sounds of his father’s typewriter in his Manhattan apartment. Sometimes there’d be an unusually long silence between clacks. The child would wonder if something was wrong. He’d feel a heavy dread coming on. Why had his dad stopped typing? Was he ill? Had he keeled over from cardiac arrest? Had his father’s imagination run dry? When the boy was older his father explained that he was waiting for the correct word to reveal itself, that the opposite—typing in the wrong word—would forever break the dream and could never be found again. I like this story (yeah, it’s a little dramatic on the writer’s part), for there’s a truth in the notion that we can dive in too quickly, and in doing so, lose the thing we are desperately bringing to life. How many of us as young people met the person of our dreams after only a couple days and were convinced this person was our one, true soulmate we’d pledge eternal love to?

There’s a time and place for writing a book (or developing a big project at work), but the pre-work is as important as sitting down to write out the fictional world. A friend of mine, Dion Hughes, founder of Persuasion, a creative brand consulting firm in Minneapolis, walks around the lake in his neighborhood whenever he and his team are trying to solve the unsolvable problem. More times than not the stroll has a way of clearing his head.

Lots of time when I’m in the research stage I’m not thinking at all. When it’s okay to clean the garage or take a long walk. Great ideas, complicated problems, thoroughly understanding the world you’re working in, coming up with a sound game plan, being flexible when the original idea morphs into something else—these things take time. Some of my best work’s been done on a solo cycling ride or listening to music on the way to the hardware store.

Give yourself a break, you big project people. Stay the course. Tinker, tinker, tinker. Immerse yourself in your thing. It needs nurturing. It needs time.

Remember, not trying is trying.