“Everything can look like a failure in the middle,” says Harvard Law School professor and author, Rosabeth Moss Kanter. The statement caught my attention while reading a video transcript from a recent blog post about her creative process. I agree that, for this reason, it’s so easy to abandon a plan before even starting out. And as pastor/author Rick Warren Tweeted this morning: “Brilliant ideas often sound absurd at first.”
Kanter went on to explain that she requires discipline to complete tasks. Even though I am creative– and tend to spend the majority of my time devising new ideas and making plans for this project or the other–I, too, am dependent on mantras like “Just Do It!” Saying things like this to myself help generate transformation and movement.
I made a commitment almost two years ago to write at least three blogs a week. Once this journey commenced, I often suffered writer’s block. Sometimes I started writing and found the subject didn’t interest me to the finish. Whatever the case, I found it necessary to write what was on my mind and heart. Oftentimes in the process, I may have lost my audience (whoever you are) by choosing subjects that interest only me. I apologize if that happened too often in the past…I’ll try harder to string you along in this post!
You see, my goal as a writer is a selfish one, really; I am doing this for me. Writing is something I love to do, even though the process can be difficult at times. When I get stuck in the middle of something, and it looks like it might turn out to be a failure, I trudge-on until I find the end. It’s therapy for me.
Later in the video transcript Professor Kanter referred to the creative process of a legendary sculptor/artist: “…if you chip away bit by bit, you do create the great sculpture. I think it was Michelangelo who once said, ‘How do you make this beautiful sculpture? Well you start with a block of stone, and then you chip away everything that isn’t David.'”
Each time I sit down to a blank page, I am confronted with possible failure– but I can’t let that stop me. I believe great writers do more editing than writing. If only I could edit as well as Michelangelo…
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Thank you to Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Quotes are from a video recorded on June 13, 2007, and were published by “Big Think.” Click here to view the Big Think post