Four cups of coffee and 3 long podcast episodes in, a certain concept compels me to take notes on our road trip. Hell, we’ve got 8 more hours to go until we reach Georgia.
Darron Arronofsky’s voice says, “Everyone has a first screenplay that won’t get made, the one you must take the bold step to abandon.” I perk up immediately.
OH really. Tell me more.
He goes on to talk about his own unmade first screenplay that still remains hidden away in that safe place creatives harbor their stories. This warm, protected environment is where all ideas are made. It’s filled with possibility. This is where I am removed from the outside world, away from the thoughts of what will happen to this perfect little idea once someone else reads it. According to him, we all get one, likely our first, that will remain in this cocoon for the rest of its life.
Yes. I have one. It’s been there and the thought of strategically abandoning its future used to make me want to quit and work at Walmart.
But now, knowing I have my second manuscript I am publishing, I think maybe he’s on to something. My elevator pitch for my first hidden lovechild has changed over the years. First, it was something I was working on and compelled to tell people about. I was excited about my first book. Then, I stalled so it was all about writer’s block. Then I got happy, so how the hell am I supposed to finish a sad story now that I’m not sad anymore, OK? I’m a writer. I can’t fake emotion!
So my first story, the one that proved to me I want to write and can, may never leave that private space of inspiration. Like an angel, it will stay forever untouched by the harshness of life. And maybe that’s not such a bad idea. If its biggest contribution in my life was to make me happy, to show me a path I want to take, to broaden my imagination, well that’s quite a purpose.
Why would that be a wasted effort? A life un-lived? If I were to “Scott Adams” this, I could judge my first unpublished manuscript as a system and not a goal, that is to measure its value by the process not an isolated outcome. Well then what I gained from creating the thing was well worth my time and energy.
And still, a part of me looks at that word document like a small puppy waiting to be euthanized. How could you do this to your own creation? Doesn’t it deserve a fighting chance? I mean, someone published 50 Shades of Grey and then made several movies out of it.
Making and sharing great work can feel highly personal. I had to let go of the intense pressure to publish that first manuscript because no matter how hard I tried, it never happened. After a certain point, it was holding up the line of new creativity. Letting go and giving time for a situation to breathe and go through its own natural process, no matter how fast or slow, has been a challenge for me. To relinquish control and let go of my expectations has been difficult.
What I’ve found works best for me with any creative pursuit, but especially with the ones that don’t come to life, is to distance myself from it. I strip myself of that connection that blinds me because it feels like the work is an extension of me. As the talented Liz Gilbert said in her novel Big Magic, your work is not your child. It is a story that needed to come out of you and be expressed, and once it’s done, should be let go of.
In this way, it becomes something I still deeply care about, but it loses that ownership over me. The process and who I evolve into as a creator is the ultimate purpose. This is the essence of why any of us get up and make things. Everything else can be fun and serve a function, but ultimately distracts us from finding our truth.