On Improving…
I’ve been thinking a little bit lately on how improvement occurs.
I’ve been thinking a little bit lately on how improvement occurs. How does one actually get better at something they want to be successful with? I know that a lot of what I’m supposed to be talking about here is writing, but lately, I’ve just been off with that whole area of my life. I’m still sticking with my goal of writing at least 300 words a day, no matter what. Over two years in with no misses (short of a couple where I fell asleep, and wrote early the next morning when I jolted awake in a slight panic.) In fact, this year, I’ve upped it a bit to 500 words or more daily. But there hasn’t been much of a “spark” lately.
Anyway, I was talking about improvement. Sadly for anybody else like me who so desperately wants a shortcut to being successful in writing (or anything, for that matter), there just isn’t one. I know at least that much. I’m not going to suddenly be divinely inspired by an invisible spirit coming in the window (search “genie” and “genius”), and type furiously for 12 hours straight until my masterpiece is formed, then quickly published, optioned for a film, bringing in millions of dollars. Not that I thought this would happen anyway. But I was hoping…
If you look elsewhere on here, you may see that I’m also a part-time craft guy, mostly doing wooden peg dolls. I’m online as DaddyCraft. I don’t sell much, but I also don’t really do any marketing short of posting on Instagram when I can. This is an area where I can actually notice direct proof of improvement, though. If you look at the image on this post, you will see three versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle named Raphael. The one from 2014 was one of my first sales on my Etsy shop. The next was a gift to a student in 2015. And the last one was just made a couple weeks ago, as a gift to a current student. I like this because I can really see how I have improved. The control of lines is better. The style has matured. I’m playing around with shading, mixing colors on my own, and adding a bit of my own design when needed. This is only in about four and a half years.
Now, I have been really working toward getting something, anything, published for about two years. And to be honest, if you can’t tell already, 2018 was pretty much a bust. I did some work on my big “Rasa” story, and an alright amount of brainstorming on some other ideas. But mostly I wrote journal entries for myself, and complained about the hundred problems (real or not) that I perceived in my life. But even if I had been really going at it, it has only been two years. If it took me over twice that long to learn how to not push a paintbrush too hard when making a Raphael peg doll, how long would it take me to, I don’t know, write an entire novel and be able to perfect it to my liking? Probably a bit longer.
So what I’m trying to say is that I have understood that as long as I’m doing something every day, as much as possible, I will get there. It may take a while, but one day I’ll look back and wonder what the heck I was thinking back then….
I mean, a smiling Raphael?! Everybody knows he’s the coolest turtle because he’s always angry!
