I relate to this deeply as a creative person. I'm in the middle of trying to bootstrap some businesses this year, and the act of creating these things is such torture sometimes.
Which is weird right? I've left my day job, I'm doing exactly what I want to do, working on exactly what I want to work on, so it should be great all the time right? And yet the daily emotional sensations I feel while actually doing the work is usually a mixed bag. Every once in a while I'll have a fantastic day where I feel great about what I'm doing from start to finish, but sometimes just defeating the resistance within me and getting any trivial amount of work done is the best I can do.
A lot of it comes down to basic quality of many creative endeavors: starting is easy, and finishing is hard. You can start anything, but if you work for long enough eventually you arrive at this ugly middle place. The part of the journey where you start to notice all the warts and imperfections of what you're making, when your limits start to show themselves, when the picture of the thing in your mind starts to diverge from what you're realistically capable of doing. Seeing that, knowing that it was you who created all of that "crap," and _still_ pushing through it to get to the flawed, imperfect, compromised final product, THAT is tough.
I suspect this is what Adams was expressing: "Arthur Dent is a burk. He does not interest me." Or expressed differently: "This character I've created is starting to become ugly in his imperfections, and I feel like I'd rather throw the work away than continue with it."
> A lot of it comes down to basic quality of many creative endeavors: starting is easy, and finishing is hard. You can start anything, but if you work for long enough eventually you arrive at this ugly middle place. The part of the journey where you start to notice all the warts and imperfections of what you're making, when your limits start to show themselves, when the picture of the thing in your mind starts to diverge from what you're realistically capable of doing. Seeing that, knowing that it was you who created all of that "crap," and _still_ pushing through it to get to the flawed, imperfect, compromised final product, THAT is tough.
What keeps me going is the deep knowledge that at the end of the day I will be happy I did it.
Same with running. Of course I hate the idea of getting up early or going out in the evening esp in bad weather. And of course first mile is horrible, horrible experience. But what keeps me running is this certainty and knowledge that it will get better ( as oxygen high kicks in and muscles stretch and body warms up ) and that I never and I really truly mean ever regretted I went for a run. Absolutely ever.
So my only job is to remove friction, get multiple types of clothes ready and near the door, not over do it and create bad experience and show up. Even if I have to lie to myself, put on running clothes and grab MP3 player and say I am just going for a walk. I know I just have to do that first mile.
It is same with my work. Of course it is hard at first. And scary. And I end up scanning job sites during breaks. But even when I create something, even something I don't like or even when project fails, I am still proud and happy I did it. Always. So I just have to show up and survive first 30 minutes.
There are still temptations you have to map out and avoid, and there are always bad days you have to be ready for. And every job has parts you don't like.
At the end of the day I do feel better than when I work anywhere else. I am not 9 to 5 kind a person. I am too anxious for that and I always end up doing free unappreciated overtime to make sure project gets done. So it is even financially better to work for myself.
This is almost true, but not quite. I find I can do some creative things very, very quickly. They don't take much time or effort at all, and they're honestly pretty good.
Other projects take an obscene amount of time and effort. They're not necessarily better.
With the first type of project I don't care about the results. I'm just noodling around with various toys, trying out various things, following up if I think they look interesting. Sometimes good things fall out.
The second type is far more conscious. I'm working, checking, improving, iterating, trying to reach some kind of standard that is impressively high.
Most of the effort goes into overcoming self-criticism and self-consciousness. And it's not a surprise these tend to be longer-term projects with goals.
It would be interesting if there were a way to build businesses and websites that was basically just about experimenting and fooling around with no real costs, in time or money.
I wonder if that might not be more successful than we way we usually do things.
Its why I think so many people in the startup community say get users right away instead of making the perfect thing - those users interest and needs sustain you when you are just too bored and disgusted with all that crap.
For me at least, I think most of my "suffering" has come from expectations like this that are incongruent with reality. Who said it should be great all the time? I'm right there with you. I have add all sorts of expectations like this in life that when put to the test via my own experience, and the experiences of others, just don't add up.
I really appreciate this comment - when I was working on my old startup, I felt exactly the same way.
I quit my old job and was working on what I wanted to, and yet felt this resistance that I couldn't explain. The nagging doubts that I was doing the right thing, that it wouldn't be good enough, and the fact that it would be all o n me if things didn't work out.
It's definitely one of those mental roadblocks that's hard to explain until you've been through it.
As someone finishing the last touches on an MVP, I really relate to this. I've been at it part-time for almost a year, so I'm surprised to see you hitting this point after only two months. Good luck, I hope it gets better!
> Writing isn't so bad really when you get through the worry. Forget about the worry, just press on. Don't be embarrassed about the bad bits. Don't strain at them. Give yourself time you can come back and do it again in the light of what you discover about the story later on. It's better to have pages and pages of material to work with and sift and maybe find an unexpected shape in that you can then craft and put to good use, rather than one manically reworked paragraph or sentence.
> But writing can be good. You attack it, don't let it attack you. You can get pleasure out of it. You can certainly do very well for yourself with it...!
Yeah, I'm in the middle of editing a novel I wrote late last year right now. A big thing I figured out was it it okay to leave out some of what a final draft needs because I can do it later. Right now I'm actually adding more rich descriptions to a lot of my scenes because I just didn't bother originally, and simply not worrying about it let me focus on the things I knew I needed and now I'm fixing it.
Not trying to do everything at once makes writing prose way easier.
There's also the closely-related case of people like the concept of being a $OCCUPATION. But they don't really want to do a lot of the day-to-day work associated with it.
This and also some interview with Neil Gaiman where he talks about how he has to invent strategies to make himself write are a great confirmations that I am on a right path in my creative endeavours.
It is easy to start rationalizing, that when you get to the point in the process where you "suffer" or loose all your interest (the grind starts), that it is due to the activity not being "it" - your passion. I dont believe this is the case. Its just the plateau which every artists experience once in a while.
I have to keep reminding myself about this. Great artistic outcomes are result of hard work which does not have to be pleasurable all the time.
As somebody writing his first novel, I had to discover how hard writing can be. The problem with prose is that it becomes good only after many passes of editing. Many means that the same chapters will be read tens of times, and sometimes certain parts will be rewritten several times. But there is no escape for this process, every prose can be improved, so in order to avoid a subpar output, this is what you need to do. However this only happens in the second stage. The first draft is another matter: in this moment you are free to let your creativity run and deeply surprise yourself. In general I believe that the creation of decent things, whatever they are, and even in the artistic world, a lot of efforts are needed, and this can make you hate the process sometimes.
When working closely with graphical artists in creating mobile browser UIs at Opera Software ~10 years ago I found out kinda the same thing. We went through so many people who just couldn't (or rather: wouldn't) iterate. They made one iteration and that was it. After that first iteration they wanted some new project or some new approach. Improving on the current approach was boring.
They were often great artists, but not yet that suitable for this kind of grinding we're doing when creating mass-market software products.
The people we stuck with were able to do 10+ iterations, slightly improving on each iteration.
I think the ability/willingness to iterate is very important in artistic fields. It does not seem to be a part of the typical university-level education programs. I think this is bad - although I see how it could be a challenge to include this aspect there.
In the Simpson's commentary for the early seasons they said they did 30 read throughs of jokes, and if it was funny for 29 times but not on the 30th, they axe it.
I experience this 100% with writing music. I suspect most of it is around the need for your creation to be good, versus allowing it to be child-like play. If you're able to suspend the need to be good for a moment, you can start to experience again the joy of playing, inventing, letting go. Kenny Werner's book Effortless Mastery is a great reference for this.
Thanks for reference.
I find music inexplicably easy unti it needs to be directed.
If I am just exploring whatever has come out then it just follows a natural path.
If I must write to a brief or to another’s melody then that is a different beast!
I find that the creative juices come and go but the real pain is doing it for other people and that seems to drive the procrastination and waning interest.
I built up an observatory and starting publishing data/images and i wrote a lot, did a bunch of guides, shared everything and dealing with people sucked the life out of it.
I can't imagine being a writer by trade and having to deal with the pressures of people trying to impose their views on the creative process.
I'm selling everything off and restoring my sanity and going with a mobile set up and writing free posts and giving away everything for free and it like the weight of the world off my shoulders...
I'd hope i could do it for a living and be creative and welcome people to the hobby - but i found it way too competitive and the community too challenging - in an odd challenging every decision you make kind of way... the best people i dealt with were teachers so i kept them around - but the worst people i dealt with were the hobbyist... they have no problems paying 5000 bucks to have crappy photos in their backyard as long as they do it but 100/bucks a year for access to 500gb of raw data from b1 skies and they do charge backs and file tickets if its not 100% perfect - even after they went and downloaded everything or sync'd the dropboxes...
maybe i'll go self publish everything in a book ;)
This is a classic garden-path sentence [1] if I ever saw one. It happens sometimes in "headlinese" when editors or authors try to squeeze as many characters out of a headline as possible.
"[A] note[,] in which [The] Hitchhiker's [Guide To The Galaxy] writer reminds himself he will [']finally get pleasure from process['][,] is] to be part of [a] book based on his archive."
That Douglas Adams hated writing is extremely well known. Stephen Fry has a good description of Douglas Adams trying to write. (It's probably in Fry's oddly titled autobiography.)
I met Douglas Adams once at a public appearance. It was one of the great honors of my life to tell him, personally, how much his books had meant to me.
He was friendly and gracious despite seeming, to me, rather uncomfortable with the throngs of people there to see him.
In addition to feeling slightly bad about being part of said throng, I always remembered and admired that about him.
It's easy to be friendly and gracious when you're comfortable; it's quite another to manage that feat when in truth you'd rather be anyplace else.
I often think of him. I'm so sorry that we lost him so soon.
His editor helped him by booking him into a motel and being there preventing him from procrastinating. He had to just sit in the front of keyboard or write.
No matter how talented or skillful, without the grit and willpower to get over the internal barriers nothing gets done.
I'm glad the notion of the shitty first draft has grown more popular. For me, I believe I heard it from Anne Lamott–which is basically that first drafts should be expected to suck. I heard it when I was relatively young, so it seeped in. It really gave me permission to let go of expectations, results, hope, despair, etc. and just write.
Frankly I don't know if it actually makes things more "effective" per se—the editing phase is the most difficult for me. I've collected some tricks to edit my own work (e.g., read out loud, change the font, triple space and print on paper, etc...) and also enlist the help of a friend, a peer, or a freelance editor. But this is where the doubts I had let go of come boomeranging back. By then though, the idea is usually strong enough for me to make a case for it and to keep refining. (If it's not I'll just shelf it and start on a different draft.)
I feel like Tarantino is the perfect example of the shitty first draft. His older films were just...tight, for lack of a better word. They were dense, every second was relevant.
With the loss of his editor and his name recognition letting him get away with anything, his later films are what happens when artists ship a shitty first draft instead of putting in the work to refine it.
[+] [-] afry1|5 years ago|reply
Which is weird right? I've left my day job, I'm doing exactly what I want to do, working on exactly what I want to work on, so it should be great all the time right? And yet the daily emotional sensations I feel while actually doing the work is usually a mixed bag. Every once in a while I'll have a fantastic day where I feel great about what I'm doing from start to finish, but sometimes just defeating the resistance within me and getting any trivial amount of work done is the best I can do.
A lot of it comes down to basic quality of many creative endeavors: starting is easy, and finishing is hard. You can start anything, but if you work for long enough eventually you arrive at this ugly middle place. The part of the journey where you start to notice all the warts and imperfections of what you're making, when your limits start to show themselves, when the picture of the thing in your mind starts to diverge from what you're realistically capable of doing. Seeing that, knowing that it was you who created all of that "crap," and _still_ pushing through it to get to the flawed, imperfect, compromised final product, THAT is tough.
I suspect this is what Adams was expressing: "Arthur Dent is a burk. He does not interest me." Or expressed differently: "This character I've created is starting to become ugly in his imperfections, and I feel like I'd rather throw the work away than continue with it."
If you're curious to read more, I write about these kinds of ideas in this part of a recent blog I wrote: https://startupinamonth.net/month-two-week-three/#flying-on-...!
[+] [-] vasoolibhai|5 years ago|reply
Reminded me of this excellent zenpencils comic illustrating Ira Glass' advice for beginners : https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beg...
[+] [-] roudaki|5 years ago|reply
Same with running. Of course I hate the idea of getting up early or going out in the evening esp in bad weather. And of course first mile is horrible, horrible experience. But what keeps me running is this certainty and knowledge that it will get better ( as oxygen high kicks in and muscles stretch and body warms up ) and that I never and I really truly mean ever regretted I went for a run. Absolutely ever.
So my only job is to remove friction, get multiple types of clothes ready and near the door, not over do it and create bad experience and show up. Even if I have to lie to myself, put on running clothes and grab MP3 player and say I am just going for a walk. I know I just have to do that first mile.
It is same with my work. Of course it is hard at first. And scary. And I end up scanning job sites during breaks. But even when I create something, even something I don't like or even when project fails, I am still proud and happy I did it. Always. So I just have to show up and survive first 30 minutes.
There are still temptations you have to map out and avoid, and there are always bad days you have to be ready for. And every job has parts you don't like.
At the end of the day I do feel better than when I work anywhere else. I am not 9 to 5 kind a person. I am too anxious for that and I always end up doing free unappreciated overtime to make sure project gets done. So it is even financially better to work for myself.
[+] [-] TheOtherHobbes|5 years ago|reply
Other projects take an obscene amount of time and effort. They're not necessarily better.
With the first type of project I don't care about the results. I'm just noodling around with various toys, trying out various things, following up if I think they look interesting. Sometimes good things fall out.
The second type is far more conscious. I'm working, checking, improving, iterating, trying to reach some kind of standard that is impressively high.
Most of the effort goes into overcoming self-criticism and self-consciousness. And it's not a surprise these tend to be longer-term projects with goals.
It would be interesting if there were a way to build businesses and websites that was basically just about experimenting and fooling around with no real costs, in time or money.
I wonder if that might not be more successful than we way we usually do things.
[+] [-] hobs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franl|5 years ago|reply
For me at least, I think most of my "suffering" has come from expectations like this that are incongruent with reality. Who said it should be great all the time? I'm right there with you. I have add all sorts of expectations like this in life that when put to the test via my own experience, and the experiences of others, just don't add up.
[+] [-] woohoo7676|5 years ago|reply
I quit my old job and was working on what I wanted to, and yet felt this resistance that I couldn't explain. The nagging doubts that I was doing the right thing, that it wouldn't be good enough, and the fact that it would be all o n me if things didn't work out.
It's definitely one of those mental roadblocks that's hard to explain until you've been through it.
[+] [-] Mc_Big_G|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oretoz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karolkozub|5 years ago|reply
> General Note to Myself
> Writing isn't so bad really when you get through the worry. Forget about the worry, just press on. Don't be embarrassed about the bad bits. Don't strain at them. Give yourself time you can come back and do it again in the light of what you discover about the story later on. It's better to have pages and pages of material to work with and sift and maybe find an unexpected shape in that you can then craft and put to good use, rather than one manically reworked paragraph or sentence.
> But writing can be good. You attack it, don't let it attack you. You can get pleasure out of it. You can certainly do very well for yourself with it...!
[+] [-] runevault|5 years ago|reply
Not trying to do everything at once makes writing prose way easier.
[+] [-] xcavier|5 years ago|reply
[The quote has been attributed to many authors, so I won’t engage in that debate]
“I don’t enjoy writing. But I love having written.”
Na’er a true word has been spoken.
[+] [-] maxwell|5 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/EhwLqRQ8unM?t=136
[+] [-] ghaff|5 years ago|reply
There's also the closely-related case of people like the concept of being a $OCCUPATION. But they don't really want to do a lot of the day-to-day work associated with it.
[+] [-] warlog|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|5 years ago|reply
> I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” ~ Douglas Adams
[+] [-] miniscapes|5 years ago|reply
It is easy to start rationalizing, that when you get to the point in the process where you "suffer" or loose all your interest (the grind starts), that it is due to the activity not being "it" - your passion. I dont believe this is the case. Its just the plateau which every artists experience once in a while.
I have to keep reminding myself about this. Great artistic outcomes are result of hard work which does not have to be pleasurable all the time.
[+] [-] RHSman2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antirez|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tpmx|5 years ago|reply
They were often great artists, but not yet that suitable for this kind of grinding we're doing when creating mass-market software products.
The people we stuck with were able to do 10+ iterations, slightly improving on each iteration.
I think the ability/willingness to iterate is very important in artistic fields. It does not seem to be a part of the typical university-level education programs. I think this is bad - although I see how it could be a challenge to include this aspect there.
[+] [-] vadansky|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BadassFractal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RHSman2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supernovae|5 years ago|reply
I built up an observatory and starting publishing data/images and i wrote a lot, did a bunch of guides, shared everything and dealing with people sucked the life out of it.
I can't imagine being a writer by trade and having to deal with the pressures of people trying to impose their views on the creative process.
I'm selling everything off and restoring my sanity and going with a mobile set up and writing free posts and giving away everything for free and it like the weight of the world off my shoulders...
I'd hope i could do it for a living and be creative and welcome people to the hobby - but i found it way too competitive and the community too challenging - in an odd challenging every decision you make kind of way... the best people i dealt with were teachers so i kept them around - but the worst people i dealt with were the hobbyist... they have no problems paying 5000 bucks to have crappy photos in their backyard as long as they do it but 100/bucks a year for access to 500gb of raw data from b1 skies and they do charge backs and file tickets if its not 100% perfect - even after they went and downloaded everything or sync'd the dropboxes...
maybe i'll go self publish everything in a book ;)
[+] [-] miguelmurca|5 years ago|reply
Are words missing from this or am I having a stroke?
[+] [-] mhink|5 years ago|reply
"[A] note[,] in which [The] Hitchhiker's [Guide To The Galaxy] writer reminds himself he will [']finally get pleasure from process['][,] is] to be part of [a] book based on his archive."
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
[+] [-] miguelmurca|5 years ago|reply
Note (In which Hitchhiker's writer reminds himself (he will finally get pleasure from process)) to be part of book (based on his archive)
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] CPLX|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bloak|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slowmovintarget|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kwdc|5 years ago|reply
Writing can definitely be torturous. Creative "anything" in general can be painful. Writers block is very real.
[+] [-] FireBeyond|5 years ago|reply
"Hate writing. Love having written."
[+] [-] microtherion|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EricE|5 years ago|reply
Somebody Else's Problem (SEP) Field - the ultimate cloaking device :)
[+] [-] eloeffler|5 years ago|reply
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Perception_filter
Adams also wrote for Doctor Who:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams#Doctor_Who
[+] [-] JohnBooty|5 years ago|reply
He was friendly and gracious despite seeming, to me, rather uncomfortable with the throngs of people there to see him.
In addition to feeling slightly bad about being part of said throng, I always remembered and admired that about him.
It's easy to be friendly and gracious when you're comfortable; it's quite another to manage that feat when in truth you'd rather be anyplace else.
I often think of him. I'm so sorry that we lost him so soon.
[+] [-] croes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabla9|5 years ago|reply
No matter how talented or skillful, without the grit and willpower to get over the internal barriers nothing gets done.
[+] [-] andrewmg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herbertl|5 years ago|reply
Frankly I don't know if it actually makes things more "effective" per se—the editing phase is the most difficult for me. I've collected some tricks to edit my own work (e.g., read out loud, change the font, triple space and print on paper, etc...) and also enlist the help of a friend, a peer, or a freelance editor. But this is where the doubts I had let go of come boomeranging back. By then though, the idea is usually strong enough for me to make a case for it and to keep refining. (If it's not I'll just shelf it and start on a different draft.)
[+] [-] blacktriangle|5 years ago|reply
With the loss of his editor and his name recognition letting him get away with anything, his later films are what happens when artists ship a shitty first draft instead of putting in the work to refine it.
[+] [-] transfire|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timbit42|5 years ago|reply