The conversation focused on the unavoidable uncertainty, vulnerability, and discomfort of the creative process. … Absolutely no amount of experience or success gives you a free pass from the daunting level of doubt that is an unyielding part of the process. … [I call this Day Two.]
Day two, or whatever that middle space is for your own process, is when you’re “in the dark”—the door has closed behind you. You’re too far in to turn around and not close enough to the end to see the light. In my work with veterans and active members of the military, we’ve talked about this dark middle. They all know it as “the point of no return”—an aviation term coined by pilots for the point in a flight when they have too little fuel left to return to the originating airfield. It’s strangely universal, going all the way back to Julius Caesar’s famous “Iacta alea est”—“The die is cast”—spoken in 49 BC as he and his troops made the river crossing that started a war. Whether it’s ancient battle strategy or the creative process, at some point you’re in, it’s dark, and there’s no turning back. …
It’s a nonnegotiable part of the process. Experience and success don’t give you easy passage through the middle space of struggle. They only grant you a little grace, a grace that whispers, “This is part of the process. Stay the course.” Experience doesn’t create even a single spark of light in the darkness of the middle space. It only instills in you a little bit of faith in your ability to navigate the dark. The middle is messy, but it’s also where the magic happens.
Transcribed by me from pages 26–28 of my first edition copy of Rising Strong, © 2015, Spiegel & Grau.
Tweet: “The middle is messy, but it’s also where the magic happens.”
Tweet: There is a “daunting level of doubt that is an unyielding part of the process” of creativity.
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Thank you for this timely encouragement, Jamie. I’m at the 31,666 mark of NaNoWriMo and I really had to press hard against the murky middle today. Some days the words flow and some days the mire in my mind bogs me down. It helps to know this is normal.
Blessings ~ Wendy
Thank you, Wendy! You might also enjoy this post: http://jamiechavez.com/blog/2015/08/the-doctor-is-in/
Being a pilot and a combat veteran, I know this quite well. It’s even more refined when combat is experienced as a contractor – even when the Geneva accords apply to uniformed combatants, contractors are fair game for anything.
You have to become war, to survive it.
There’s another analog I like…the bacon and egg breakfast.
The chicken is involved, and the pig is committed.
My dad always used to say that about the pig and the chicken. He was a USAF pilot and Vietnam veteran. of course I learned all about the point of no return, too, at the dinner table. 🙂
I completed a electronic design recently with hundreds of interconnected components.
Some individual components with hundreds of connections and 10,000 pages of documentation!
Extremely complex.
Lots of places for mistakes to be made.
After hundreds of hours of effort, you commit thousands of dollars to make the first one.
You build it.
You apply power.
Nothing happens.
Now, the real work begins.
As previously indicated, you have to BELIEVE you will overcome the problem(s) hidden somewhere in this exercise in complex creativity.
Otherwise, it is completely overwhelming.
And you are out of business, not sure how you are going to provide for your family.
Faith, Commitment, aren’t optional.
A 9 to 5 job for someone else? It isn’t any safer.
You have just tied your fortunes to another’s faith and commitment (often in you!).
You just elected to believe it was safer.
Life, it is a risky business.
Risky but worth it. 🙂