“I believe that closing the aspiration gap by developing your authentic voice is the primary job of any creative…. The process of developing your authentic voice is not linear, it is a curved line. There is an ebb and flow to growth, and you will often feel like you have to take a few steps backward in order to advance. This is because growth demands that you push yourself to your limits – and often beyond – in order to increase your capacity.” Todd Henry Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice
Artists who create anything, begin with a gap between the work they want to create and what they are actually capable of creating at the moment.
When you are a beginning writer this gap seems highlighted as you look at other authors work you admire and measure it against your own.
That was one of my big mistakes when I started writing. I began to see how far I needed to go to get really good at the craft of writing – my own high expectations – and quite often that would leave me paralyzed for days, unable to write.
Or even worse… I wanted to quit.
Have you ever felt the tension between creating work that is trying-to-be-good and work that isn’t-as-good-as-you-expected?
If you’re in that place of stretching, you’re not alone.
If you are a beginning writer and you are feeling the stress of trying to close the gap between what you aspire to create and what you actually are creating in the moment, read on…
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How Most of Us Begin…
Most of us start out writing without a whole lot of experience. That’s normal.
For many writers, its the vision we have in our imaginations of the books we want to put out into the world, that gets us into the game in the first place.
That’s where I started. I had never published anything. In fact, because of a bad experience in elementary school(where my teacher said my writing was like chicken scratchings), I thought my dream of writing books was a curse, rather than a blessing. I think the worst part was that for years I believed my writing wasn’t good enough. So why bother? I stopped trying.
For years after that, I blocked out the idea of writing, until I started homeschooling our four kids. As I helped our children write their fiction stories, the dream came back stronger than it had ever been. That’s when I tentatively started writing ideas down for book ideas. It wasn’t until I started to find some other writers in Facebook groups and an online class that I started to believe in myself again.
When I started writing, I was disappointed by the gap that existed between the words I wrote on the page, and the great novel that I had envisioned in my mind.
So what does it take to go from being a beginner to master artist?
It takes commitment to work hard at learning your craft. It takes daily practice, month after month, year after year. It takes not giving up, even on the tough days.
This is the daily struggle that budding artists and writers who want to create work that’s unique and great, go through.
It’s tempting to quit. It’s even more tempting to move onto something that seems more “reasonable” simply because we’re frustrated by our temporary inability to reach our goal.
If we want to get really good at anything, we need to practice. Most often our practicing will mean that we’ll go through trial and error much of the time, feeling like we’re failing.
When you are learning a new skill and make mistakes, it’s not failure. Rather, you are constantly being stretched as you try new things and discover your own unique style – your voice.
Then as you reach new levels of expression, you will be better prepared when the moment of opportunity comes. As you build your platform and your instincts and intuition is honed, you continue to get better at expressing yourself and growing in your craft.
The only catch, is that as a writer, you must be willing to ride out a time period of months or even years, in order to see growth and to progress in closing the gap between that of a beginner and master artist.
Stretching beyond where you feel comfortable, will mean that you’ll feel ‘not good enough’ or ‘less then’ for awhile.
Don’t give up when you’re in gap. If you keep writing and creating work you love, you’ll start to see that you are getting better.
Keep discovering more of who you are and what you love to write. Keep modelling and emulating those writers that you admire until you reach new levels in your craft.
“…It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. It’s going to take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just got to fight your way through.” Ira Glass
I hope you’re inspired by this video by Ira Glass, as he talks about the struggles people have in the creative process:
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