Had an interesting experience earlier in the year when doing the illustrations for And Then I Shall Transform: there are six short stories, so obviously I did six illustrations… except I ended up doing seven. Why? Because one of the illustrations I did just didn’t work.
Here it is:
Now, it’s not a BAD illustration necessarily, right? BUT it doesn’t read clearly. Not sure if it’s more or less the case online, but certainly in person, it’s hard to focus in on the fact that it’s a human hand holding a cube; the cube kinda gets lost in the overall illustration, and since I needed that to clearly be the point, I decided the illustration wasn’t doing what I needed it to do, and changed plans. Instead, I drew this one, which I really love:
What was interesting to me, though, was how EASY it was to just… change my mind. I had no emotional angst about OH NO, OH WOE, I MADE A BAD DRAWING AND THEREFORE AM FAILURE. No. It was just, Huh, that picture doesn’t read right, dagnabbit gonna have to do another one.
And like, PARTLY this is because I don’t identify as a visual artist so it’s not threatening to my identity, and PARTLY it’s because the drawing took about 30 mins and so it didn’t feel like as much ‘wasted time’ as if it had been a short story that I’d spent hours on, and PARTLY it was because I was making this piece of art for the slightly more utilitarian purpose of ‘have illustration for story’ rather than, like creating art for art’s sake… but it definitely got me thinking about a) how much less stressful that was and b) how much more easily it allowed me to just, y’know, pivot?
Like, I didn’t then sit there staring at the next blank page angsting that my next drawing would be terrible, I just picked a new inspo image, dove in there, and drew a new drawing.
So I want to cultivate this more in both my writing – the ability to just kinda dispassionately go Huh, oh yeah, that story didn’t quite work right, oh well – and also in, like, life? Because perfectionism keeps us small more than almost anything else, right? But instead, it’s a well-documented thing that I’m too lazy to link to right now that one of the fundamental hallmarks of genius is just the willingness to keep iterating until you hit on something that works. You don’t let the pieces that don’t work define you, or slow you down; they’re just… pieces that didn’t work. That’s it. No deeper meaning, no value associated, literally just ‘oh hey, this one didn’t work’.
So yeah. I’m after cultivating more of that in my life, especially as I enter this new phase where I can once again get back to making space for writing in my daily life, which is always a bit of a challenge after a long break – I haven’t written anything much since finishing up the shorts for And Then I Shall Transform back in late Jan/early Feb (?), so naturally all the old fears have built up again (not as much as they used to, nowhere near like that, but the writing brain still goes a bit stale after a break, see the Pen Of Crap analogy) so yeah, maybe IDK diving in to regular short stories with this iteration mindset, or something.
I don’t know, maybe I should literally iterate and commit to writing like three short stories on the exact same idea, just for the experiment of it :’D If visual artists can do it and call it a triptych, why not a triptych of short stories? 😀
I like that.
Hmm.
Expect updates.
Want more? Check out my stories on Instagram and say hi, or join my never-actually-monthly-even-though-that’s-what-I-intend mailing list!
This blog is reader supported. If you’re enjoying it, leave a tip in the tip jar on the way out. <3