I mentioned something to Elizabeth that confused her for a bit, because I was’t particularly cogent, and I thought I should explain it better, and for the two of you who aren’t Elizabeth, you can see something new and, I think, pretty cool.
The concept is jumping the gap between 0 and 1. This is something you do every day, at least when you’re school-bound. You stare at the assignment. You read the instructions. You look out the window. You read it again. You say “okay, I think I know what this is about. I can probably do this.” And then, you crouch down, look ahead, and jump. You put the pen on the paper, and move the tip. You start to write. And suddenly, where there was nothing, there is something.
Jumping the gap between 0 and 1 is tougher than 1 to 2, or 1 to 100. At that point, you’re building on something already there. It’s that initial jump where the urge to give into procrastination is strongest, where excuses can derail you easiest.
We’re all creatives of one discipline or another, so creation (or rather, subcreation) is something we each deal with on a near daily basis. And, for the most part, it’s ex nihilo. A blank page or canvas is terrifying in its possibility and your inadequacy to fill it.
From “Bird by Bird”, of course, we get our heroic technique of the One-Inch Picture Frame. Anne Lamott writes that whenever she feels stuck, or uninspired, she picks up a small one-inch square picture frame that she keeps on her desk, and reminds herself that she just has to fill one square inch with words. She just needs something, anything, and then, there just might be something in there that she can work with and get her back on track.
I don’t actually have a picture frame on my desk, but I should, because the object lesson is invaluable. To get started, you just have to start. To continue, you just have to start. To finish it up, you just have to start. Journey of a thousand miles, baby.
Credit for “Jumping the gap between 0 and 1″ belongs solely to Ze Frank.
Ohmyword, the world makes sense now.
Thanks.
Wow, that’s brilliant. And completely true. Slogging through NaNoWriMo, I found that the hardest part of each day was starting. Once I got some words down, the mountain had been scaled and the rest of the way was downhill. (Okay, that’s not quite true, but compared to the 0-1 gap, it was almost always downhill. :))
Yeah, I really wish I’d had this concept with me from the start of NaNoWriMo. I might have done more of the Wri.
[...] I found this fascinating post on M’s blog, which I stumbled across via E’s blog: Jumping the gap between 0 and 1 is tougher than 1 to [...]