That’s the mistake many of us make when embarking on a creative journey: We set our minimum performance standards to warp-factor high, and then when we don’t come even close, we conclude that we have no talent, and that we were fools for thinking that maybe we had a little.
Some of you may know that this is National Novel Writing Month—affectionately known as NaNoWriMo. The idea is that you write 50,000 words and call it a novel. No one grades it or evaluates it; you get your virtual trophy by uploading the text to the NaNoWriMo site, which verifies that you did, indeed, submit…
Rather than indulge your creativity to create doom-and-gloom scenarios, harness your creative power for your own damned good. Start imagining possibilities. Start dreaming.
This Is Shit: If unhappy, yet creative lawyers haven’t crashed and burned on the shoals of This Is Tricky, this is usually where we founder. Comparing our fledgling efforts to the final product of masters runs rampant. All the warts of reality scream at us, and we are keenly aware of how much distance there is between our original vision and where we are. Oh, how agonizing that distance is! And we have little, if any, idea of how to fix it. Our usual bag of tricks, whether paltry or plentiful, has failed us.
What you need, and what is fantastically hard for driven professionals like lawyers, is to simply let your mind wander with some ideas that are not calculated to solve a problem. To ponder without an agenda. To allow yourself to simply be, in all your unproductive glory. Walking is a great way to get to this state.
