Reading 📚 Start Ugly

𝟬𝟭 ƬӇЄ ƲƓԼƳ ƤƦƠƁԼЄM The fact that it took me a couple of months longer than I expected to begin a book about starting feels like it should be an omen to me. Perhaps I should write a book about irony instead. The coffee cup beside me says "Create" in bold, mocking font, like it's taunting me. And still I begin. Look at me go. I'm already 62 words in. I should reward myself. Maybe go downstairs and get a bagel, though I'm out of cream cheese so I should probably head to the store. So much for writing. Dammit. This isn't going well. But it is going well. I know this because I've started the hardest work of any single thing we do or make: beginning. It has been this way with every book I've written (this is my 31st, if you count my eBooks), every article, every series of photographs, every project around the house. Going back over a decade to a time in my life when I made a career as a comedian was most certainly the case; getting on stage and starting was always the hardest part.

Beginnings are hard. They always have been and always will be, but after 25 years of making my living solely on the results of my creative efforts, I've come to accept that they-the beginnings are the most important part of the creative process. At least they are for me, and this seems to be true of my students as well, among whom the most common frustration I hear is some version of, "I just don't know where to begin," or, "I just can't get started." To be sure, there are frustrations aplenty in the creative life. The creative process is not a paint-by-number kit; it comes with no guarantees. There are people who, once started, also get stalled in the messy middle of a project, and others who just never quite finish. These are problems of their own. But they're problems we'll never have the joy of solving unless we take the first hesitant steps and just begin. I'd also like to suggest that there is no one and only Start to every project, but many. You start when you sit down to begin a thing and plan it out. You start when you begin, in the case of a book, to write the ninth chapter even when you're not sure where it's going, and you start a new phase when you write the final words, or wrap production on the album or movie and ship the work you've created. Every day is a new start.

1_ The basic premise of this book is that starting any creative effort is the most important step and doesn't have to be so paralyzing. Much of the difficulty is related to fear, but also to a misunderstanding of the creative process itself and a lack of reliable tools to help pry things loose in that process. Underlying that is another premise and that's the fundamental notion that creativity is not reserved only for the arts. Writers, sculptors, painters, dancers, photographers, and anyone who readily identifies with being a "creative" will immediately know the challenge of the process. Some of us take a certain pleasure in how difficult it can be. But we are not the only ones who create, or make. 2__Creativity is not reserved for the exclusive use of those who imagine themselves in touch with the muses. It's the right and privilege of every human being. It is what separates us - for good or for bad - from the rest of the animals with whom we share the planet. We make, not just because we must, as birds do to make a nest or as beavers do to build their dams, but because we can. Because it brings us joy and challenges us and gives us meaning, and yes, in some cases also because we must. We must because we need homes and cures for diseases, but also because there is some inner force that won't go away until we silence it with the making. Here's what is incredible about the process of making, and the way our brains work: I sat down half an hour ago with the intention of scribbling some words that I hoped would make the introduction to this book. I had a very loose outline. But the paragraph that preceded this one? I had no idea I would write it.

1___On some level, I'm not sure I even knew that I thought those things in exactly that way. I mention this because I want to acknowledge the mystery of making or creating anything before I begin to make it sound understandable. The ball often rolls with a momentum and in a direction we didn't anticipate, and that makes it seem like it comes from a source external to ourselves. In the past, we've called it inspiration, something for which we've both credited (and in its absence, blamed) the muses, the Greek goddesses responsible for the arts, literature, and science. Inspiration - ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛɪᴠɪᴛʏ ɪs ɴᴏᴛ ʀᴇsᴇʀᴠᴇᴅ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴇxᴄʟᴜsɪᴠᴇ ᴜsᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴏsᴇ ᴡʜᴏ ɪᴍᴀɢɪɴᴇ ᴛʜᴇᴍsᴇʟᴠᴇs ɪɴ ᴛᴏᴜᴄʜ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴜsᴇs. ɪᴛ's ᴛʜᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ᴘʀɪᴠɪʟᴇɢᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ʜᴜᴍᴀɴ ʙᴇɪɴɢ. - was something to be received, and our role was passive. 2___There is nothing passive in the act of making anything. Of writing, it has been said it's easy: you just sit in front of your keyboard and open a vein. Piece of cake. Making photographs, which we too often call "taking," is an intentional act of putting together too many decisions to name, each of them changing the experience of the photograph itself. The best of them, the ones with which we resonate, are made. Movies are not accidental; stories do not tell themselves. Your garden isn't going to plant itself. On the strength of recent experience, I can tell you that home renovation is anything but passive. Turning a house our realtors only later referred to as a "shit hole" into the home of our dreams was one of the most creative experiences of my life. It was anything but passive, and no amount of inspiration, from the gods or otherwise, was going to get us through a process that began to feel more and more like pulling on a loose thread and the inevitable unraveling of a sweater. Only in this case, it was one of those creepy macramé owls from the 1970s that we wanted to turn into a sweater. 3___Creativity, in the arts or otherwise, is about the everyday making of things. It is not about muses and inspiration, or bolts from the blue: it's about problem-solving and exploration. It's about risk and encounters with the unknown. It brings with it its share of fears and a need for courage. This is one reason so many books about creativity lean toward motivation. If I could cheerlead you into being more intentionally creative, I would. But it takes more than courage though I'd argue you can get further with courage alone than any other idea in this book. It takes an understanding of the challenges that are common to creating and a willingness to embrace strategies or solutions that have worked for anyone who has made anything for as long as we've been doing so.

1___This book is, I hope, the needed middle way in conversation about creating. We need to talk about the fears and the internal barriers to beginning, and then making, our best work. But to do so without talking about the external obstacles would be incomplete, like what I imagine a football game might be like if all the efforts were put into the cheerleading and no thought was given to the actual plays. I say imagine because I'm the last guy in the world to use a sports metaphor, so I hope it stands up. Now, about the title. Everything starts ugly. We sure did. Look, I love babies as much as the next person, but they arrive looking like little squawking lizards covered in yogurt and jam. They're messy. Imperfect. And in hindsight, not much more than a mere suggestion of the person they will one day become. But no one just gives up on them because they don't show up fully grown and able to go all day without soiling a diaper. Ask any new parent: for whatever staggering joys they are experiencing, beginnings are tough. 2___Have you ever learned a language? Same thing. It's really ugly at the beginning. That ugliness is one of the reasons so many people stop learning, because if you want those sentences to stop sounding like you've got a mouthful of marbles and you want to stop accidentally saying, "Today I feel like a turnip," instead of "Today is a lovely day," then it takes practice, and at the beginning, practice is always ugly. You should see me do yoga. I started this year, and it's the ugliest damn thing you ever saw. But it's getting better, ever so slowly.

1___We fear ugly, so we never start. We fear that it will never get better. We see no promise that our truly rough first attempts might become the thing we hoped for, the thing that we feel pressured to make perfect. We're scared others will see us and judge us; that our ugly first efforts will reflect back upon us. We fear we might not have the resources to pull it off, to bring it to completion. So, so many fears. For many of us, it's the very real fear of not knowing what the next steps are. We don't have it all figured out, all we have is this spark of an idea that we can't shake, and we want to make it real, we know we can, but we don't know how. So we stall. We hesitate. We wait. For what? I'm not sure. The muses, perhaps. Inspiration? 2___The hardest part is beginning in the face of these fears. I try very hard not to make prescriptive statements or talk about human experiences that are universally true because there are so few of them. But as different as we all are, we have many things in common. The fundamental ways in which our brains work, for example. Basically the same, but in the details, we differ. One thing I'd be pretty close to citing as a universal principle is that everything begins in uncertainty. Even those things about which we think or feel we are certain are not. Uncertainty is unsteady ground upon which to begin something, but it's the only ground we've got. The creative process-the way we make things-is a step- by-step process. Actually, that's an unhelpful way of look- ing at it because step-by-step implies each step is basically the same and it's a matter of momentum and repetition. Just put one foot in front of the other and you've got it. But that's not it at all. It's more like an improvised dance. It is iterative. One step leads to another. One move suggests the next. You can't know what the whole dance looks like until you look back on it, to see how it all came together. Each step is an uncertainty until you try it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. There, now I've given you a metaphor about something else I don't for a moment pretend to be able to do.

1___But I do know comedy. And I know improv. And what I know about that is the same as what I only suspect of anything in which we improvise: you never know where it's going, and what it looks like at the beginning is not remotely what it looks like when you've called it done. So while the beginning isn't everything in the creative process, the creative process is nothing without it. If we accept that it's almost always ugly at the beginning-if we embrace it and celebrate the rough edges and half-baked ideas and see where they lead and if we can separate those from our need to get it right, to look like we know what we're doing - then we can experience more beginnings, and stronger beginnings. Not pretty, no, but strong, necessary, speculative, take-a-deep breath-and-see-where-it-leads beginnings. 2___See that? 1,900 words I didn't know were coming. Sentences I had no idea I would ever write-one improvisational step in front of the other. What you don't see are all the words I deleted. That last sentence? I wrote some versions of it three times before I settled on it. Don't wait to be certain. Don't wait until you've got it all figured out before you begin. Writers don't think and then write; we write in order to think. You can't do that unless you're willing to put some words on the page, take many of them off, and move them around. And you can't do that unless you're willing to start, and for that start to be ugly. It is the same for everyone who makes anything. Let's begin.

𝟬𝟮 ƬӇЄ ƑЄƛƦ ƠƑ ƲƓԼƳ 1___If the secret to making things-to being creative and getting things done-is mostly in the starting, why is it so damn hard? On the surface, what could possibly be so difficult about putting paint to canvas, words on paper, or whatever it would take for you to do the things you long to have accomplished when one day you look back at your life? Why does every fresh start (or the need for one) seem to make us feel like we're about to attempt the impossible and make us look for any diversion possible in order to put it off another day? True, some of it is just laziness. Making things takes effort. It requires that we show up and get to work in a way that staying put and staring at our phones just doesn't demand us. 2___It's less immediately rewarding, too. Checking social media provides the hope of that immediate dopa- mine hit of fresh likes, comments, connection, or affirmation - feelings that seem a long way off when we're beginning some new thing. Sure, writing a song will one day feel really good, by which I mean having written a song will feel good. When it's done. When the wrestling is over and we've signed our name to our creation. Few things feel like that. But there's also the possibility that this particular song doesn't go where we hoped. Like Sisyphus, our stone could just roll back down the hill and we'll have to begin again. And that scares the hell out of us. Compared to the hard soul work of making something new, taking refuge in social media is an easy out.

1___So, yes, it might be laziness, but I think it's more than that. I think it's fear. Primal, lizard-brain fear that whispers in our ears, "What if? What if it doesn't work out the way I hoped? What if it's a total failure? What if the thing I make isn't well-received, is misunderstood, or worse, ignored? What if the only thing I know for sure is the first step, and then it all falls apart? What if I don't have the time, the money, the talent, the energy-what if I just don't have it in me? What if I'm biting off more than I can chew with this thing? What if I'm just wasting my time with this, I mean I don't really know where it's going, do I?" And on and on. 2___These fears might be conscious for you, they might not, but they are there. Collectively, they've been there for thousands of years, all of them left over from a time when failing, not belonging, and not being accepted, was a life and death situation. As a race, these were very real fears at one point in our history, and the part of our brain controlling those fears had a vitally important job: keeping us alive. The moment that lizard brain @0(the amygdala) felt threatened, it kicked into overdrive, signaling the body to release stress hormones, quicken our breathing, narrow our vision, raise the blood pressure and push the blood to the extremities, and shut down the brain as the body gets ready to either fight or run like hell.

1___There are times that either fight or flight is still an important response, but standing in front of a group of 30 people and giving a 10-minute speech is not one of them. And yet, this relatively benign activity (for God's sake, it's not 30 tigers!) counts as one of the western world's great- est fears. Why? Putting ourselves out there is scary as shit, that's why. There was a time when belonging to the tribe was everything, when conformity to the norm mattered and being ostracized (seriously, how bad do you expect that speech to be?) could mean being cast out and separated from the safety and survival that tribe represented. 2___We use the word "tribe" a lot these days. Almost all of us mean it metaphorically, as in, "You guys like Star Trek and goat yoga, too? I've found my tribe!" And when we finally do come to our senses and stop doing goat yoga or whatever phase-of-life thing we were into, it's unlikely that tribe will send us out of the camp into darkness to fend for ourselves. The crippling fear we have, even when it doesn't feel significant on a tigers-will-eat-me scale, feels very real, because it is. The amygdala is way behind in terms of evolution. Actually, it's probably right on track; it's technology and society that's far ahead of the curve, outpacing our evolution dramatically - which is probably a good thing because when evolution catches up with us, the only thing our hideously misshapen thumbs will be good for is texting.

1___In other words, our lizard brain is looking for dangers that no longer exist for us and haven't for a very long time. But it doesn't know that. Never got the memo. The fear feels real - it is real-even if the danger is not. Let me repeat this so you don't feel like I'm trivializing it: putting yourself out there is scary. And making things, especially making them in expectation that the world (even the small world of your immediate peers or family) is always an act of putting yourself out there. In fact, it might be harder when it's "just" your friends and family because the risk is higher. There's more to lose. There's a misconception that the size of the audience is what makes it scary, but I've found that not to be true. I spent 12 very happy years of my life performing comedy, mostly for kids and families. The largest crowd I ever performed for was at Whistler, British Columbia, on New Year's Eve as the clock ticked toward the year 2000 and we all braced for the world to end. 2___At a conservative guess, there were 10,000 people in the audience. Ignoring for a moment that it was one of the worst performances of my life, the size of the crowd didn't make it hard. In a crowd that big, when 100 people don't think you're funny, it's a drop in the bucket. In a crowd of 30 people, if just three people don't like you, the energy can change dramatically. You can see it on their faces. It changes you as you try to pander to them, doing or saying anything to turn them into fans. But at the end of the show, no matter how bad you bomb, you're still alive. You lick your wounds, go back to your routine, and figure out how to make it stronger. The tigers are nowhere in sight.

1___But they feel like they are. Fear isn't logical. It's emotional. And our responses to that fear can be anything but rational. After the tragic events of 9/11 and the skies reopened to air travel, many people were too scared to get back on a plane, and instead travelled by car. The very real, very logical-feeling fear made them do it. But it wasn't logical. Statistically, the chance of being injured or killed on the highways in America is astronomically higher than being killed in a plane, much less finding yourself on one commandeered by terrorists. Car fatalities post - 9/11 were noticeably higher. Sometimes the lizard brain, acting in our best interest, is the very thing that sabotages us. 2___ 𝘾𝙊𝙐𝙍𝘼𝙂𝙀 𝙄𝙎 𝘼 𝘾𝙃𝙊𝙄𝘾𝙀 𝙏𝙊 𝙇𝙄𝙎𝙏𝙀𝙉 𝙏𝙊 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙁𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝘼𝙉𝘿 𝙏𝙊 𝘼𝘾𝙏 𝙄𝙉 𝙃𝙊𝙋𝙀𝙎 𝙊𝙁 𝙋𝙍𝙊𝙑𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝙄𝙏 𝙒𝙍𝙊𝙉𝙂. So what do we do about this fear, especially in the context of a book that's about making things; a book about everyday creativity, and not about the bigger topic of fear itself? Not being a psychologist or therapist and having never walked on fire at a Tony Robbins event, all I can tell you is what has worked for me in the real world of wanting so badly to do something with my life, make some things I'm excited and curious about, and hoping the little stuff doesn't get too much in the way.

1___The first thing I have done is look that fear in the eye and called it by name. There was a time in my life when I was pretty angry, going through a divorce and scared I was about to lose everything. It was paralyzing. I was going to lose everything. And then my counsellor asked me to make a list of what everything was; to be specific. I filled page after page of a yellow notepad of all the things, one by one, that I feared losing. Some of it was legitimate. Yes, I might lose the couch. Hell, I might lose both couches. But was I losing anything that couldn't be replaced? I wasn't. Was I losing the tools by which I made a living-my creativity and comedic timing? No. Would the divorce force me to give up my jokes, my love for an audience, and my ability to market myself? My friends? 2___If you forgive me for anthropomorphizing it, fear avoids the specifics and deals in vague generalities. Standing in front of an audience giving that speech? The fear kicks in: "Don't do it! Danger! You could bomb!" But it's never very specific, is it? It never follows through. Sure, I could bomb. And then what? Someone in the audience might rightly conclude that I didn't do that very well. And then? I know once in a while the answer might be, "Then I lose my job, David; thanks for nothing!" But really? Most of the time, we sweat it out and step off the stage, glad to be done, and people tell us how great we did. We brush it off. Crisis averted. And though it might not help this one specific time, as a general response to day-to-day fear (I'm not speaking here of deep-seated phobias), it is helpful to unpack the specifics and look it in the eye rather than just stewing about it. "What's the worst that can happen?" is a very real and helpful question when you go looking for the answers rather than leaving it rhetorical. The worst is almost never that bad.

1___The other thing that is helpful is to become much more familiar with the things of which we are afraid. The more we fail, the more we discover our own resilience, the less we worry about the imagined consequences, and (happily) the more we enjoy the rewards. By the end of my comedy career, I had an agent in Nashville and was doing regular shows around Canada and the U.S. Most of my audiences numbered one to two thousand people in the later years, and I loved it. Loved it. There is a high that comes from making that many people laugh that is genuinely hard to beat. 2___But it was an odd career choice for the quiet kid in grade 10 who couldn't do a speech in front of his class without visibly shaking and blanking out, my autonomic nervous system in overdrive while I tried to survive the ordeal. And I did survive. And I continued to hate it. Until I started to perform for kids. I started as a clown, something that'll get you quickly used to an audience of people that mostly hate and fear you. But I was safe behind the makeup, had access to tanks of helium, and had these beautiful little wins when a kid would smile or laugh. It was the little wins that helped. And bit by bit, I realized even the harshest audience was no threat-that they all had something to teach me. Bit by bit, I realized how harmless the roughest audience was and how easy it was to bounce back.

is genuinely hard to beat. But it was an odd career choice for the quiet kid in grade 10 who couldn't do a speech in front of his class without visibly shaking and blanking out, my autonomic nervous system in overdrive while I tried to survive the ordeal. And I did survive. And I continued to hate it. Until I started to perform for kids. I started as a clown, something that'll get you quickly used to an audience of people that mostly hate and fear you. But I was safe behind the makeup, had access to tanks of helium, and had these beautiful little wins when a kid would smile or laugh. It was the little wins that helped. And bit by bit, I realized even the harshest audience was no threat-that they all had something to teach me. Bit by bit, I realized how harmless the roughest audience was and how easy it was to bounce back.

1___The same is true of diving with sharks. Yes, sharks are the apex predators of the ocean, and the first time you see one underwater, your heart quickens and you look for the exit, but as you get to understand their behaviors and you have more and more encounters with them, the fear changes. It diminishes because the uncertainty caused by ignorance or one too many shark movies as a kid gives way to knowledge and familiarity. You learn what to look for, which species are harmless, and which of them you need to behave differently with. The more you learn and experience, the more it displaces the unknown and the fear that often follows in its wake. 2___We are more resilient to these psychological fears than we know. I can't talk you out of them, but I can tell you the reality of them is very rarely as scary as the shadows they cast on the wall. I can tell you that most often, at least in the context discussed here, you can bounce back. And that the thing we are scared of isn't nearly as frightening as looking back on our lives - having passed so quickly our heads will spin - and wondering only then, when it's too late, what we were so scared of and why we let those fears stop us from doing the things we so badly wanted to do: things that would have opened opportunities we never got to experience and made our lives so much different. If there's one thing I am afraid of, it's allowing my fears to prevent me from living my life fully.

1___Perhaps there's a way to change the narrative and bring our fears on board with a new agenda, one more concerned in our daily lives with thriving than merely surviving. If we're going to listen to the fear, why not listen to fears that nudge us in the right direction? Fears based on possibilities that have a very real chance of coming true? Why do we not fear the loss of important relationships more than we fear losing face? Why not fear the loss of 40 years of our lives than the loss of a job that kills our souls? And re- turning to the more immediate subject, why not fear never making the art we wanted to make more than we fear the reasons we have for not putting ourselves out there and for taking a chance? 2___I think those are questions worth asking since the idea of living without fear at all (much as we would like it to be otherwise) isn't likely for most of us. But there is another way. Courage. Plain old I'm-scaed-but-to-hell-with-it-I'm- doing-it-anyway courage. Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's not the feeling of bravery. It's turning to that part of us that is screaming, "What if this is a horrible failure?" and saying, "I have no idea, but let's find out." Stephen Pressfield, author of The War of Art, talks about using fear as a compass that points towards the hard, but most important, directions in our lives. I've come to see courage as three things: leaning into the fear, seeing where it leads, and one of the essential pillars of the creative life.

1___Courage isn't something some of us have and some do not. Courage is a choice to listen to the fear and to act in hopes of proving it wrong, and it is available to all of us, though "available" has never meant "easy." For most of us, it doesn't look like the stuff for which we win medals. For some, it's just getting out of bed or writing the first lines of the new novel. For others, it's sending the email or pressing publish on a blog post. And sometimes, it's facing the task honestly enough to know it is too big and breaking it down into pieces that are less overwhelming. 2___In the last few years, my mantra has been "do it anyway." It's a reminder to me that there will always be reasons not to do it (whatever it is). I can justify anything to myself and make it sound good, so if I want a way out of doing something, I can find it. Valid reasons abound, or they can if you give me a moment. Do it anyway. Sure, I could do it tomorrow instead of now. Do it anyway. Yes, people might hate my blog post. Hit publish anyway. Do I have any idea whether this is going to work or not? Nope. But do it anyway. And yes, it's probably going to be ugly when I start. Do it anyway. ƊⰙ ƖƬ 𐤠ƝƳⱲ𐤠Ƴ. ...

1 𝟎𝟑 ƬӇЄ ƬƳƦƛƝƝƳ ƠƑ ƤЄƦƑЄƇƬƖƠƝ I don't like the word "perfect." Never have. It's pretentious. It's boring, and the idea that it represents things made without flaw or defect is unattainable and doesn't for a moment resonate with me. Perfect is the realm of unicorns. Maybe also dolphins. But the rest of life is a hot sticky mess, and creative efforts are even more so. Like the fears that try to keep us safe, the goal of perfection - either in our process or the end result of our work-is a self-sabotaging goal. In fact, it's probably just another fear dressed in drag as something that's meant to sound good. Because it sounds like we should want "perfect" doesn't it? Even in high school, I was taught interview skills and told that if I was ever asked about my flaws, I should say that I could be a bit of a perfectionist. I told you it was pretentious. It's like admitting to being too noble. "Oh, me? My flaws? Well, I sometimes rescue too many kittens." Rubbish. Perfectionism, or the elevation and pursuit of the perfect, is the fear of the imperfect. The ugly. It's the willful, myopic, disinheriting of the flawed and the messy, the shitty first drafts, the hesitant first efforts. 2 Creators must not fear the messy, the bad ideas, or the disastrous first attempts at something. Not only must we not fear those things, we must run wildly towards them, arms open like a deranged lemming heading for the cliff. Lemmings, for the record, don't jump from cliffs, nor do they run headlong toward them with arms spread wide. They don't have arms. You can add this to my growing list of dodgy metaphors. Why such enthusiasm for the ugly stuff? Two reasons. The first is that the ugly stuff is very rarely as ugly as it looks. Diamonds look pretty gross before you clean them up, too. Second, if we merely put up with ugly, we won't pursue it, and I've already told you what I think about a passive approach to creativity. We've got to chase it down. Too many people chase the perfect. And because the pre-made perfect thing doesn't exist, we'll end up sitting around waiting for it to show instead of grabbing every crappy rock we can find and polishing it until it shines or until we know there's nothing there, and we grab the next rock and start again. 3 The expectation of the perfect (hell, even the hope of the pretty damn good on the first try) stops many of us from starting at all; that's why it's dangerous. But it also stops many of us from finishing. We don't hit publish, send off the manuscript, put that piece up for sale on Etsy, or sign our name to it because it's not perfect. Creators make things. We finish them. We put them out into the world. It is not created until it's done, and as so few things in life are perfect (even after we've worked ourselves to death to make them so), we risk never being done. Seth Godin calls it shipping. You've got to ship it and move on. Start once more. But it'll never happen if you're waiting for perfection. Good, yes. Yours, certainly. Excellent, even. But perfect? That's a long wait for a train that's not coming. 4 Two further ideas have replaced the notion of the flawless perfect in my mind and have helped me recalibrate my thinking and the way that I create. The Japanese have a concept that honors imperfection, brokenness, and decay called wabi-sabi. There's an implicit belief that a thing gets more beautiful as it gets scarred from use and imbued with its own story. That's my own imperfect understanding of wabi-sabi; it too is probably rough around the edges, but I find it beautiful nonetheless, and very helpful. 5 What wabi-sabi is not is a rejection of excellence, skilled craftsmanship, and good taste. When we abandon the obsessive pursuit of perfection, we are not automatically endorsing sloppy, lazy work; perfection and excellence are not the same things. Nor are perfection and authenticity even remotely related. Wabi-sabi is a way of embracing that; a way of saying something can be done and can be excellent not only despite the flaws but even because of them. In reality, it's the nicks and scratches and the dents and mistakes in ourselves and in what we make that make us and our art unique. One of a kind. By definition, they are part of the personality of both the artist and the art. 6 There's another Japanese tradition that intrigues me. Kintsugi is the art of fixing broken pottery with gold lacquer, not to hide the breaks but to highlight them and honor them. Kintsugi appeals to me because it feels honest. It feels like a more human approach to the unavoidable flaws, a wabi-sabi way of honoring the story of an object rather than discarding it, which is too often our approach to the flawed. Because I can sign my name to it and call it done, because I've been "done" before and know I can do it again, and because I'm not afraid of the cracks but see them filled with gold, I'm more willing to start. And starting is where the magic is. 7 𝟎𝟒 (chapter) ƬӇЄ ƊƛƝƓЄƦ ƠƑ ƇƠMƤƛƦƖƧƠƝ I suspect the need for perfection is tightly tied to the way that we compare ourselves with others. We have a compulsion to know where we stand in the world, not relative to who we are, but to the tribes to which we want to belong. Just yesterday, another email came in from a sincere artist who, in so many more words, said essentially this: "I will never be a real artist, I will never be another Picasso." As though the two had anything to do with each other. As if making things we make, why we make them, how we make them, and whether we judge it as success has anything to do with other people. Much less a long-dead Spaniard. And yet, human nature (and the more recent invention of social media and the pressure it brings) seems determined to make sure every moment of our lives is a moment in which we have the chance to look over our shoulders at what others are doing. There is almost no surer way of going off track. 8 Have you ever tried to steer a bicycle in one direction while looking somewhere else entirely for more than a moment or two? As a teenager, I got it into my head that oiling the chain on my bike would go much faster if I just did it while pedaling. Not one of my best ideas ever. When I picked myself up off the ground, I realized I had been hit by a car! A car that, on closer examination, had no driver and, once I thought about it, hadn't moved from that spot for a couple of days. Like I said, not my best idea ever. Like riding a bike, making something requires attention to what we are doing; looking to see what others are doing and measuring our efforts against theirs guarantees two heartbreaking eventualities: never making art that is truly our own, and never becoming the person that is truly us. 9 The great artists in the world - no matter their field of endeavour-share this one thing: they did their thing their way. They didn't check to see what others did or how. They didn't measure what they were doing by public opinion. Tony Bourdain didn't check in to see how Jamie Oliver was cooking his brussels sprouts before he did his own. He did his thing, and if you didn't like it, too bad. Tony captured our hearts not only because of what he made as a chef or a writer, but because he did it so unapologetically his own way. That was his art. The same is true of Miles Davis, Prince, Oprah Winfrey, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, Emily Dickinson, or Gandhi, or anyone else who has made their unique mark on the world. 10 Of course, it's easy to pick names from among the famous, isn't it? But remember, it's not their fame for which we celebrate them; it was their courage to be themselves. They weren't unique because they were famous-they were famous because they were unique. The fame isn't the point. In mentioning these names, I'm not suggesting we compare ourselves to them. I'm suggesting we understand that each of them was just one person, many of them born into very humble circumstances, many of them with the odds stacked against them. What put them on the path for which we now celebrate them and find meaning in what they did was a willingness to be themselves. They might finish in a blaze of glory, but they started ugly, just like we do. 11 A willingness to discover and to be yourself is the job of the artist (or the maker or creator if the word "artist" gives you a rash). The job of anyone who makes anything is to be true to the voice that called them to that task and to see creation as an exploration of that desire. It is not to make copies or imitations. And it is not to make masterpieces. That is a result, if it ever happens. It is not to make great art. Someone else will one day decide that, if it happens at all, and we have no say in it. No, our task is to do the one thing that is within our control: to make things our way, and to make them unapologetically (even defiantly) ours. And then to do it again. And again. And as we do so, we get closer and closer to figuring out what it means to be us, to make work that is unmistakably us. We make the art, but it is also true that the art makes us. 12 In order for that to happen, we need to stop comparing ourselves to others. I suspect one of the reasons it can be so hard to start a project is because we get sidetracked, and to second-guess ourselves when we have a sense of what our first steps might be, looking to see what others are doing or how others have done or made this or that, instead of to our work. Our eyes must always be on our work. When we look at the work of others, what we usually see is what's missing in our own work. We see what we are not doing ___ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴇᴀᴛ ᴀʀᴛɪsᴛs ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ sʜᴀʀᴇ ᴛʜɪs ᴏɴᴇ ᴛʜɪɴɢ: ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴅɪᴅ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ᴡᴀʏ. ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴅɪᴅɴ'ᴛ ᴍᴇᴀsᴜʀᴇ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ᴅᴏɪɴɢ ʙʏ ᴘᴜʙʟɪᴄ ᴏᴘɪɴɪᴏɴ. We see awards we are not winning, a size of audi-ence we do not have. We see that the way they see the world is not the way we see it, and we wonder what's deficient in us. And if we're trying to be that person, there's a lot miss-ing. Just as they're missing some crucial pieces if they want to be us. But they don't. And it could be that the reason we look at their work and (in our better moments) celebrate it for what it is and not just use it as a point of comparison or envy is because they are looking to their work alone and not glancing over their shoulders. They are making work that is authentic. 13 Authenticity is a popular word right now, and like all good words, I worry that its overuse will make it meaningless. Like the word "passion," which is a formerly favourite word of mine but has been so overused I want to roll my eyes when I hear it now, which is a shame. Everywhere we turn, someone is claiming to be passionate about something they're doing with only a little more than mild enthusiasm. Quoting The Princess Bride's Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Passion is unmistakable. Passion means you're all in. You don't have to tell people you have it. If they don't see it in your work, you don't have it, but that's a different sermon. 14 To make something with authenticity means to make something that is true to who you are. It's the same idea as originality: to be true to the origins of something. Part of the sense of the word "authentic" means to do something on your own authority. The word "author" is related; it doesn't mean someone who writes, but someone who is the source of the writing. Far from being merely the current word du jour, to make something with authenticity is the hardest thing in the world. To make something with authenticity, to make some-thing truly your own, is the ongoing and daily struggle. It requires that we put ourselves out there; that we bring something to the table. It requires that we show up and bare our souls. And it implies all the risks that come with that. And all the fears. And so it's no wonder that it's some-times hard to get started on things that matter. It's also no wonder we feel something gnawing at our souls when we keep putting it off. 15 There is so much to be learned from other artists. I have a book beside me right now about the daily routines of writers. I read biographies of painters and writers, inven-tors, and musicians. It helps knowing that they struggled with the same obstacles and demons I struggle with and still managed to put something into the world that was original and authentic in the truest sense. Next to the hot mess of an individual that was Vincent van Gogh, I'm do-ing pretty well. It helps to know I'm not the lone delinquent in the crowd that doubts himself and his work. But learn-ing from others is very different from comparing myself in an effort to become like them or create like them. 16 "The only person to whom I compare myself is myself." I've often heard those words when this conversation comes up. I used to nod my head. Yes, true, how very wise. Saga-cious, even, I would think. But now I'm not so sure. I don't know anyone who's got a very clear view of themselves. The mirrors most of us look into have been so warped and cracked by years of voices pushing us this way and that. People telling us we can do anything, others telling us we can do nothing right. The years were not kind to many of us as kids, and many of us take these wounds into adulthood, believing ourselves to be the sum total of all things we were told we were-or weren't. So when you tell yourself you only compare yourself to the person you see in that fun-house mirror, I want to remind you that that is also likely an unkind and inaccurate comparison. You're looking in the wrong place. 17 Don't compare yourself to who you've been told you are because you probably aren't. Don't compare yourself to the person you wish you were because you probably think that person is much further away than they are. Don't com-pare yourself at all. Be yourself. Listen to yourself. Keep your eyes on your work. Take hold of the narrative going on in your mind, silence the voices chattering about what you should do and how you should do it, and ask yourself, "What can I do? How can I do it? What are the possibili-ties?" Then embrace your whim, desire, or curiosity, and follow it wherever it leads.

1 𝟎𝟓 ƬӇЄ ƑƛƖԼƲƦЄ ƠƑ ƧӇƠƲԼƊ When I was six years old, my parents signed me up for hockey-not something I recall having any say about, and certainly, if I know myself at all, not something I had any desire for. This would be my first and last real experience with team sports, though I didn't know that at the time. I have no real memories of this event, but then PTSD will do that to you. I also have no memories of the game being explained to me, not the purpose of the whole thing, and not the rules. But miraculously, one idea did stick: if I was unlucky enough to get the puck, I was to keep anyone else from getting it. The nuance that this "anyone else" probably only included the players on the other team and that there were acceptable, and therefore also unacceptable, ways of keeping that puck away from them, was clearly lost on me. 2 When the horrible day came that the puck did come to me, proving - at least to my young mind - that not everything happens for a reason, I panicked. Completely lost my mind. So I followed the rules; I sat on the puck. It turns out hockey does not ask you to interpret the rules so much as to follow them. I learned that they're very specific about this kind of thing. I have never been good with rules. Or people yelling at me, of which there were suddenly many. "Get off the puck, kid!" This incident put a stop to any hope my parents might have had of me going into professional sports. It also provides hints about why I am as suspicious of rules and anything dressed in the word "should." 3 When I teach photography, I often hear the question, "Which lens should I use?" It's sometimes replaced by, "Which settings should I use?" or, "How should I compose this picture?" That they are such common questions tells me there is a flaw in the way photography (or maybe any art) is taught, though I think it's a bigger problem than that. I think if we go all the way back to the school systems in which most of us spent our most formative years in which we were laying down the most important wiring in our brains - we learned that there was a right way and a wrong way to do almost everything. 4 We didn't so much learn how to think as what to think. We learned how to fit in, and that we should. We learned the value of conformity but were never told what it would cost us. Many of us learned early the consequences of deviation from that path, first from teachers, and later, from bullies At the beginning of any task, we've been trained to ask, "What is expected of me?" The concern over how we ought to do something is so wired into many of us that it never occurs to us that the obligation ended when we left school. Or it might have had we not immediately jumped into jobs for which those schools trained us. Jobs that carried their own obligations and lists of shoulds or oughts. 5 I'm speaking as a bit of an outsider about employment and jobs, having graduated from theology school to become not a pastor but a comedian. After five years in two separate schools, both leaning more towards fundamentalism than I'm comfortable admitting now, I was taught more than my share of shoulds and oughts, many of them in languages I only pretended to understand. That I dropped out of Greek class to learn to juggle should tell you everything about how those years went for me. What I did learn, painfully at times, was that shoulds and oughts frown darkly on uninvited questions. 6 I also learned that it was the questions that were most interesting. Shoulds and oughts are about answers - most often very specific answers and sometimes they were unwavering answers to questions we seemed to have long forgotten. My accidental journey into comedy and the fact that no church seemed to want me saved me from taking what for years my parents still called "a real job," usually in the context of, "When are you going to get one?" But friends and classmates had different paths, and I watched them go into jobs that maintained the obligation to follow the shoulds and the oughts. 7 It's not my intention to judge the choices others make about their jobs. Not everyone should be a comedian; there were people in my audience who were pretty sure I was among them. But it's worth understanding the pattern. There's value in looking back at our lives and seeing the slow but persistent chipping away of the thoughts and behaviors that made us stand out and to see the slow erosion of the finer edges of our individuality and creative thought. It's easy to see the way our questions turned to answers and, once in possession of those answers, the loss of the ability to press on with further questions. 8 Questions of should and ought free us from the uncertainty 𝙄𝙁 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙁𝙄𝙍𝙎𝙏 𝙌𝙐𝙀𝙎𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉 𝙒𝙀 𝘼𝙎𝙆 𝙊𝙐𝙍𝙎𝙀𝙇𝙑𝙀𝙎 𝙄𝙎, "𝙃𝙊𝙒 𝙎𝙃𝙊𝙐𝙇𝘿 𝙄 𝙎𝙏𝘼𝙍𝙏 𝙏𝙃𝙄𝙎 𝙏𝙃𝙄𝙉𝙂?" 𝙄 𝙏𝙃𝙄𝙉𝙆 𝙒𝙀'𝙍𝙀 𝘼𝙇𝙍𝙀𝘼𝘿𝙔 𝘿𝙊𝙊𝙈𝙀𝘿. of more creative and individual thought. They have their place in building a society, constructing buildings and laws; please don't mistake me, I'm not asking you to start burning tires in the streets. I think creative individuals make stronger global citizens, not sociopaths. I'm not suggesting you abandon your social conscience and start driving on the wrong side of the road. 9 I'm suggesting we're addicted to getting answers because it's easy and we've been trained to do so. And the problem with answers is we stop asking questions once we find them. "What should I do?" when applied to the novel you are writing or the dance you are choreographing will find an answer. It will. You're a creative person; you'll solve the problem. But it could also be that the first answer to that question, though it seems the right one, isn't as strong as it might have become if you had kept asking better questions. "What should I do?" isn't remotely as powerful a question in uncovering possibilities as "What can I do?" 11 That. Right there. That's the point. What do we get to do? What are the possibilities? How can we approach this differently? What if my assumptions are all wrong? What if it's not this or that but some combination of this and that? All of these questions serve us more faithfully than the previous questions. All of them lead us to new possibilities, and all of them require us to test them out, to fail a couple of times, and in doing so, to find even more questions and more possibilities. To do this requires a certain amount of defiance or a willingness to resist the tractor beam of conformity and homogeny. It requires a willingness to stand out rather than blend in. Yes, that takes courage, but this isn't about being different for the sake of being different; it's mostly about being faithful to who you are and asking your own questions rather than settling for the answers of others. 12 Isn't this a book about getting started and being more creative in the truest sense of the word? Making more, getting more done, and shipped? It is. And if the first question we ask ourselves is, "How should I start this thing?" I think we're already doomed. The alternative is simple and powerful: replace obligation or any sense that there's a right or wrong way to do this, with possibility and questions that reflect that. Replace it all - even for those of you doing client work (I'll discuss constraints later)-with better questions: What do you want to make? What would be interesting for you, exciting for you? Where is your curiosity leading you? What crazy, bold, idea would you entertain if no one was looking over your shoulder? How would you like to do this? What excites you? 13 Then look for possibilities and not answers. When we find an answer, we stop asking the question. Done. The exploration stops. But possibilities require us to play with them and see where they lead. Possibilities get us from the undeveloped ideas and the low-hanging fruit to the stronger ideas and more interesting questions. Answers stop the flow. Never stop the flow. 14 𝟎𝟔 (chapter) ƬӇЄƦЄ ƖƧ ƝƠ MƛƤ Flow is a state in which the ideas come free and easy, or so it seems. It's the height of the writer for whom the chapter just emerges onto the page. It's the lost time of the songwriter who, hours after she has sat down to work, looks up from a song that until now never existed, and feels like no time at all has passed. It's that time in the studio when every stroke of the brush feels right. And it's the reason we long believed in the power of the muses and the idea of inspiration because it all feels so magical. But we have to get there first; we have to strike out into the unknown territory on which every act of making a thing begins. That unknown territory is different for us all. For some, it's the blank page, for others, the silence not yet filled with song, or a stage and a waiting audience. But for all of us, that emptiness is calling: Start. And if you're like me, you'll respond with "Where?" 15 It is human nature to want a map. We want to look down and see it all laid out before us. That red dot is where I am now. The other is where I want to end up. And here, the most direct path between them is marked with a yellow highlighter so I don't get confused. It's all so easy. But the problem with maps is that they depend on knowing the territory and, if you plan to use one to navigate, then you need to know the destination. When we make anything, we never know the destination, and we rarely know the territory. But we think we know. Many of us have an idea in our heads, something we've visualized and thought about so often it feels almost real. And it is those expectations that can trip us up. 16 As a photographer, I've learned that what we expect to see blinds us to what is actually there. When I was still an entertainer and studied sleight of hand, the first lessons I learned taught me how much goes on where the audience isn't looking. In fact, so much more goes on in the spaces where we aren't looking and aren't expecting anything to happen than where we do. We miss so much when we're focused on what we expect and looking for the map. If there were a map to our creative process, it would rob us of one of the great joys of creating and would stop us from getting to the unexpected places that so many of us, once done, credit for the work becoming what it is: serendipity and the discovery of new directions and possibilities. 17 There is no map, but what we have is so much better. We know how to get to flow. And if we know how to get to flow, then starting gets much easier; it's free from the paralyzing need to know exactly where we're going but comes with the freedom to focus instead on how we are going. Flow requires four things: time, attention, skill, and challenge. When you put your head down to do something, free from distraction, and that something challenges the level of the skill with which you make it, flow occurs. Rather, it can occur. We all need different amounts of time: time to ramp up our creative thinking and shake the dust off; time to gain momentum. We all ebb and flow with the levels of attention we can give and the distractions we allow. And the mix of skill and challenge is always changing, so this isn't so much a recipe we follow as it is a dance we participate in. 18 Follow me a little further on this detour; we'll get back to the map (and its conspicuous nonexistence) in a moment. We'll explore time and attention later, but for now, consider the role that challenge plays in attaining flow. Creativity, however else you want to define it, is ultimately just problem-solving. It's the brain's process of combining ideas in the real world, and for it to work, it needs a problem to solve something to chew on. That's the engine of our creative efforts; without something interesting to chew on, it loses interest. The muse gets bored, petulant, and lazy. 19 Challenge happens when the level of our skill is just a little outpaced by our vision for the thing we're making-when we fight just a little out of our class. That's when the sparks fly. Take on something that's not interesting enough, that's not a challenge, or that doesn't make you question whether you can pull this off, and you'll get bored and rely on past efforts and well-worn paths. You will not do your best work there. And if you take on something too big, you'll get frustrated because your resources just truly aren't equal to the task, and you won't do your best work there, either. 20 If we want to get to flow with any consistency, our vision must always outpace our craft. But our craft must always be growing, keeping up, if only always a step behind. It's in that space where we flow and do our best work. 𝙆𝙉𝙊𝙒𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝙃𝙊𝙒 𝙏𝙊 𝙂𝙀𝙏 𝙏𝙊 𝙁𝙇𝙊𝙒 𝙄𝙎 𝙈𝙐𝘾𝙃 𝙈𝙊𝙍𝙀 𝙄𝙈𝙋𝙊𝙍𝙏𝘼𝙉𝙏 𝙏𝙃𝘼𝙉 𝙆𝙉𝙊𝙒𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝙒𝙃𝙀𝙍𝙀 𝙔𝙊𝙐'𝙍𝙀 𝙂𝙊𝙄𝙉𝙂. 21 Back to the map metaphor. The only maps that exist in the creative world are templates. Formulae and recipes. Paint-by-numbers is a map. You didn't start reading this book because you don't know how to paint by numbers. You started this book, at least in part, because you hunger for more. The thing you hunger for, I suspect, is a greater familiarity with flow and a better understanding of how to get there. I think if more of us knew how to get to flow as part of our everyday working-class kind of creativity, starting would be easier because we would know that flow isn't magic, and it doesn't need a map. 22 You do not need to know where you're going; that will be revealed to you as flow happens. If you can trust me on that, stick that promise in your back pocket while you finish the book and I'll make it worth your while. For now, consider a change in your thinking and a shift in focus from, "How do I get there?" (because not being able to answer that will prevent you from starting) to, "Let's see where this leads!" Every act of creation is wildly speculative: it's a great big series of what-ifs and a willingness to explore around the blind corners to which a state of flow most reliably leads. We would all be so much more at ease in the making and in the starting (and enjoy it all so much more!) if we let go of our expectations and were more open to seeing where it all leads. That doesn't mean we let go of our hopes, our longings, or the ideas that got us to the point of starting. It means we hold them with an open hand and lean into the excitement of discovery, checking the specific expectations at the door. 23 Too often, our focus is on getting it done, on signing the work-and shipping it. Shipping matters, but not at the beginning. At the beginning, a focus on the end product needs to take a back seat to the process of making that thing and needs to come with full permission to take the scenic route and the detours, to put the top down and enjoy the unexpected. I don't want to get too zen on you, but we've got to be a lot more in the here and now when we create. To enjoy this moment, this challenge, without laying our expectations on top of them. There is a time to flow and a time to course-correct, and those times are mutually exclusive. 24 When we are making, every day is a new beginning. When I sat down to write this morning, it was not so much a continuation of an existing process; you can't just jump back into flow. This chapter was a new start. And what I began with was not a map for getting to done on this chapter, nor a sense of exactly what it needed to look like. I started with just a sense of what this chapter needed to do and the pit-of-my-stomach feeling of, "Well, I wonder where the hell this is going to go?"-a feeling that can be experienced as either negative or positive, depending on what you look for. I choose to look at it as an adventure. I know that if I sit down and begin writing, that my first words, ideas, and whole paragraphs will be ugly. They must be. Their job is to be ugly and grease the wheels. But they'll lead me somewhere. 25 They always lead me somewhere. Not because I have a map, but because I have something more important. I have put time aside, I am careful with my attention, and I've learned that the flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants feeling isn't something to scare me off but an indication that I'm at the intersection of my craft as a writer and my vision for the direction of this book. I've also accepted that right now, as I write, my job is not to edit, not to clean up the mistakes and the mess; if anything, it's to make more of them and see where they lead. There will be time to edit, to rewrite whole paragraphs, even whole chapters. But I will never get there if I keep looking down at a map of my own making, taking myself out of the only one way of creating and doing my work that has ever worked: flow. Knowing how to get to flow is much more important than knowing where you're going, because you never really do. But flow will show you.