Over the last week I discovered the three stages of creation, according to Ellen.

Part I: The Desire to Create Something Awesome

First you decide you want to create something - and not just anything - something awesome - what's the point of even bothering otherwise, right?

It can be a song that makes someone feel like dancing, a CV that interrupts a potential employer's session of Farmville to call you, a drawing that your art teacher holds up to the class as an example for everyone.

It can be an iPhone app that sells a million, a book that hits the bestsellers list, or a blog post that dives through all the nonsense and noise that simmers on the surface of the internet, to mean something to someone.

The pressure!


I remember a famous author claiming it was the first three chapters of any book that are the hardest to write. With so many things you could potentially write about, so many possibilities for people and characters, scenarios, and topics, sometimes it can be easier to decide that you can't think of anything, than to choose something and deal with the pressure of believing that this is the right direction to go in.


Then you can keep growing your idea by believing that you are unique and therefore you are better, pushing through until those "three chapters" are written.

Part II: Finding your Flow

Then comes the second part, and this part is one of the main reasons you bother to push through the pain of Part I. It happened to me when I was writing a short story last week. Once I had wiped that smug look off that blank page, chosen a scene in my head to write about, and squeezed a large portion of it out onto the page, somehow I found my flow.

It was magical.

In coffee shops before the train, amidst bumps and distractions on the train, in coffee shops after the train, it just streamed out of me, this interpretation of a scenario that I could see in my head translated into words.

I found myself adding to the story, developing it, and as the words and ideas flowed haphazardly on to the page, it all sounded as fresh and warm as hot scones, just out of the oven, a work of art that John Updike would be jealous of. I must have given the voices an overdose of that paralysing agent.

Part III: Shipping

But then comes part three: Shipping.

Inevitably, as you are preparing something for the eyes of others, it doesn't quite meet requirements. Reading back over those fresh words I mentioned, seeing it through the eyes of a reader, it all started to sound rather clunky: spelling mistakes, grammar errors, sentences that were repeating content and words that bumped up uncomfortably against each other. It didn't quite roll off the tongue as it had while I was immersed in the flow.

So you have four choices:

1. You can quit, and start afresh.

In Seth Godin's book, Linchpin, he couldn't have put it better. The resistance, he calls it, comes into action when you are attempting to ship something. It's when the paralysing agent wears off, and those voices come back louder and stronger than ever.

You start to wonder if you really want to have a million people using your iphone application - that means you have to provide support. That book hitting the bestsellers list? Then you'll have to go on the radio, do book tours, and face the follow up pressure that Elizabeth Gilbert famously talked about on Ted.com - The blank page becomes even more intimidating with an audience of millions waiting for your next creation.

Now that you think about it, maybe it's best if you don't ship at all. Anonymity may not be exciting, challenging or fulfilling, but it sure as hell is cosy.

2. You can self sabotage.

Looking at all the work that you need to do to make it presentable for shipping, you can easily do nothing and trick yourself into deciding, "Ah sure, it'll do". Raw and unpolished, you ship with the faint hope that someone will see the beauty in it, but they probably won't.

Or you can do the opposite of nothing - everything! You can tweak and change it, add bits here and there, swap things around, delete the sex scene that you are scared your parents won't approve of, change the tense, the scenario, the characters, the theme, make it sound more like someone else you read recently, and before you know it, you have ripped your beauty to shreds. It is unrecognisable, lacking any of its original beauty, but then, failing is safe.

3. You can wait.

You can take more time, make it better, add more parts, and change things. You can postpone - what's the rush?

4. Or... you can pick a date, and ship.

You can sit with the fear of people seeing what you have created.

You can ignore the impluse not to change anything, and fall short of changing everything - you can just change what needs to be changed.

You can set yourself a date.

And you can work all day and all night and force yourself to create something that you are proud to say is yours, that deserves to have your name attached to it, and you can address any embarrassment that you feel at inadequacies due to lack of time, at inadequacies due to lack of experience, at inadequacies due to choosing a substandard topic initially, and remember that they are more than made up for by the pure and simple fact that you are finishing something, that you are doing the best you can do with the knowledge you have today, under the time constraints that you have set yourself, or which have been set for you.

You can ship.

Then you get the chance to face a new blank page, or a whole new set of challenges, and a whole other experience of flow. Only when you start and flow, and finish, over and over again, will there be the slightest chance that on one of those cycles, that something you ship will mean something to someone, somewhere, and if not, at least it has most definitely meant something to you.