You Have To Earn It

For a variety of reasons a few years ago I committed myself to start taking my bucket list seriously. In that time I've bought a house, spent a couple hundred hours in Blender and started learning Japanese.

All of these have been incredible and I've enjoyed them immensely, but none of them have impacted me as much as writing a book.

In the past few years I've come to realise that what we create is a reflection of ourselves and where we're at at the time. Often I read back what I've wrote when I'm dumping words on the page and been perplexed by how easy it is to see myself staring back. It feels like a naked reflection of my inner self, warts and all.

When I thought about writing the book I came up with all these interesting scenarios and conflicts that would be really fun to write because these are the things I get most excited for in media. My gorilla brain lives for the "Top 10 Hype Moments in Anime" videos.

These "Hype" moments are usually memorable though because of how invested I am. The end of Re:Zero Season 1, Ippo vs Sawamura, The End of Evangelion. All of these are things I was gripped to and enjoyed all the way through. I wanted to write something that would have made child me go "WHAT!"

This need and the process that's followed led me to a massive realisation that I've sinced applied to lots of other areas of my life.

You have to earn it.

A story made of hype moments becomes fluff. It's all fireworks.

You don’t get the impactful moment without the work.

You don’t get the memorable line without the context.

For there to be a crescendo there has to be a build up. There has to be moment after moment after moment. A story has velocity carried by how continuously you contribute meaningful, relevant scenes to the reader.

You have to earn it.

To write a good book, I've learned, is to be good at writing moments.

A year ago, I easily spent most of my time invested in the book thinking about fireworks. These days I'm working on the moments.

And then I realised that that’s life.

As this idea rattled around my mind for longer and longer it started to dawn on me that I had spent my life seeking the fireworks.

I wanted explosion after explosion because it felt more exciting, but now I see it was to my detriment and I had not grasped the bits inbetween.

In hindsight it's easy to say, and I'm aware I'm fueled by an intense personality and severe ADHD, but I have a lot of regrets over how I missed opportunities because I couldn't connect the smaller dots.

I spend a lot more time learning and working now, aware that I don't have to look for the fireworks because they arrive from the moments.

Leave the fireworks to come to you. You have to earn it.

I turned 30 in June. I'm grateful I learned this now.