Mind the gap

This morning I’m going to share some comforting and inspiring advice from Ira Glass.  Mr Glass hosts a much-loved storytelling and storysharing podcast called This American Life.  If you like, you can have a listen to the advice by clicking here. 

Basically, he talks about starting to do creative work, and how there’s a gap between what you want your creation to be - whether it’s a story, a stand-up act, a cake, a drawing - and what it actually is.

It’s the gap between ‘this story sucks’ and ‘it’s working’.

Ira says that a lot of people give up as soon as they see the gap.  Like when I write something, read it over, am disappointed with its clunky emptiness, and lower my head in despair.  How could it ever get better?

But according to Ira if we keep at it, it will.  If we make enough stories, jokes, cakes, and refine what we do and learn and persist, it will get better. 

For me, a big part of stepping over the gap is gradually learning to be more discerning when it comes to the voices in my head.  Which voices are encouraging me, which have story potential, which are worth playing around with, seeing where they take me, who a character might be.

There are some thoughts - negative, sabotaging ones - that I need to politely shut the door on.  They’re the doorknockers, burglars and religion peddlers of the-voices-in-your-head world.  Because, honestly, I’ve found them about as helpful as a cat who likes to pee all around my house. 

Those thoughts make me start to think about writing the way I think about childbirth (I don’t mean to offend women who’ve actually gone through childbirth, writing is obviously never that painful ... unless you're writing during childbirth), but sometimes it can feel like an overwhelming, impossible notion that I’ll be able to push any of my baby ideas and characters out of the tip of a pen.

So now when I start down that track, I’m going to think to myself: WWID (What Would Ira Do)?  And I'll pick up a pen and, hopefully, start to close the gap.