A Step Away From Self-Pity and Senseless Rambling

9. Waiting for perfect: Smallest viable breakthrough

The smallest unit of genius you could bring…

Could you re-write one paragraph of Fahrenheit 451 and make it better than Ray’s version?

Could you write one new page for the screenplay of the Matrix?

Can you play just one note on the clarinet that’s worth listening to?

Just one?

The only way to get there is to be wrong on the way to being right.

Be wrong. Be wrong. Be wrong. And then maybe you’ll be right.

The goal isn’t to be right or wrong, it’s to move forward.

How To Take A Walk On The Wild Side

Seth Godin at TED 2014 Is it a note worth playing?

Prompt: Share a small breakthrough you’ve had. A single bar of guitar, a blog post, a paragraph from a novel, a minute from your podcast. How did it happen? Share the process. Now, share the bad work that had to happen before you got it right.

A Step Away From Self-Pity and Senseless Rambling

Earlier on in my dailies, I wanted a change of pace from how I was originally structuring them and spawned a daily that I more-or-less riffed from the heart on why I hate Saturdays. Out of all the things I have written thus far, this one seemed to generate the most feedback as it was pertinent to pretty much anyone who lives the 9-5 weekday grind. One piece of feedback I received from another writing group completely caught me off guard:

I really like this. I’m coming late to the party, so others have already addressed the minor issues I woud have raised. The only thing I might toss in to experiment with is that, in the 2nd stanza you have 2 lines “ I get burned no matter what I do/ But most of all,” that might be worth a rethink. The first because the rest of the poem has a sort of universal feeling, but that one line comes off as a bit self-pitying, and for me sort of took away from the universal theme.

I didn’t realize it until then, but I really loathed myself and a lot of the decisions I had made up until this point in life, and it reflected in my writing. Not in the sense that I made horribly bad decisions, but a sense that I could do so much better, and was not living up to my own expectations. It was then and there that I realized, eventually, I would get to the level I wanted to be at, but only if I gave myself the chance to do so. To be caught up in everything you are not makes you miss out on everything that you already are, and are yet to be. And you are brilliance in the making.

I also learned that writing shorter dailies and being extremely precise with the words you choose creates bigger impact. Every part of your writing will now have meaning instead of loosely tying together all the important bits together. Makes you really want to wait a while and wonder, what other important bits am I loosely tying together in my life?