Reflection.

Hemingway said, "The first draft of anything is s@#$." We have a mantra in my classroom about first attempts ... "Don't get it perfect, just get it down."

Good things come with time. The soul that wants to race through the cage door needs to be patient with the comtempaltive mind. Solutions will come from stillness if true stillness is achieved. Think about what is being thought about ... for a while.

No phone.

No computer.

Nobody.

Put the judgment on hold. Allowing time for reflection can lead to germination, "magic from mud" (thanks Cultural Offering).

A recent article for The Creativity Post explains ...

The reason we should “never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down” is because we initially don’t know which of our ideas are worthwhile. It’s only after we get everything down that we are able to recognize what works from what doesn’t. This is the lesson from Ritter’s research: we need to give the unconscious mind time to mull it over so it can convince the conscious mind to make adjustments. Or, as Nietzsche said in All Too Human: “the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre or bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects…. All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering.”

Read the rest here.

Remember that "it's harder that it ever looks," so don't get discouraged.

If I Could Just Get It On Paper

If I could just get it on paper
The things that have happened tonight
But that seems to me to be the big key
I'm havin' too good a time to ever turn
Out the lights.

Go to bed wake up with a clear head
Recalling what made it a ball
If I could just get it on paper
I might make some sense of it all

If I could tell half of the stories
The funny way most things begin
Figure ways to disguise all the half truths and lies
Find the heart of my song with the point of a pen
Simple words can be come clever phrases
And chapters could turn into books
Yes if I could just get it on paper
But it's harder than it ever looks.

All alone in the edge of the water
Hidin' out by the Sea of Cortez
With my sketch pads and Flairs
Tapes and battery spares

It's just no comprehendo to what everyone says

Time alone seemed to work well for Faulkner
Time away seems to work for the kid
Life and ink they run out at the same time
Or so said my old friend the squid

Yes if I could just get it on paper tonight
I could tell you what I think I did.

- Jimmy Buffett