Struggle and Flow

`0:06:54`

Actually, okay, we'll do a football Like I'm not a big football fan, but I know I know football. Okay, so basically like when you're running back, you're sort of following what the line is is is doing. They're trying to create a hole for you. And sometimes it just sort of emerges, but then you just got to run. And I have found that when I'm writing, there's there's certain times where I have to say I got to put the plans away. I'm not coming to dinner. Like I found a hole and I need to run because that hole will close in 12 hours. Yeah. You don't control the hole. Yep. It's just like someone makes it for you or something makes it for you and you go. And there's there's this song when I wrote this thing called the um 37 Signals Guide to Internal Communication. Yeah. Yeah. Read that. And I wrote that in like an hour and it's long. And I

`0:07:40`

just couldn't stop. Like the the hole was open and I just felt like I just was in a flow and just kept going. And I barely edited that piece at all and I felt really good about it at the end, but that only happens when there's the hole. Again, if I if I'm finding myself in the middle of it and I think it was like I don't know, 30 points or something like And then sometimes I'm like, well, I want to get to 37 because that's our 37 signals, 37. But then I'm like, then now it's contrived and I have to stop myself very quickly from going over the edge because once I go into that contrived place where I'm where I'm I'm efforting something too much, it's going to be bad. I really don't want it to feel like effort. When it does, then I feel like I'm in the wrong place. Let me say this too. When I when I read I can sort of intuit that that's how the

`0:08:27`

off I'm guessing here, but that's how the author was feeling when they were writing it too. Like I'll read something. I just read this book, The Overstory. You know this book? Yeah, Richard Powers. Yeah. Oh my god, it was incredible. I mean, it's a Pulitzer Prize winning book, so like I'm not the first person to say it, but his writing style, I just kept reading it and I'm like, man, he must have been smiling when he wrote this. That's how it felt. There's some super clever lines and clever paragraphs and clever passages. I'm like, he must be so proud of himself at the end of that. It's like, that that nugget, those six sentences together, that just nailed it. And I can just imagine a smile or imagine a pride in that in the author. That's what I want to get to. I want to have that feeling when I write something. What came to mind was Like this sense of just Oh my goodness.

`0:09:12`

Yeah. It's just this awe, this majesty. Yeah. And I've had many moments throughout the years where I've seen that and I've had that wow moment and I've said, I didn't even know that that was possible. Like a sense of elegance that I want to recreate. That book is full of that. And I that's how I felt actually in that book. I was kind of shocked. I don't read a lot of fiction. I started reading that was the first fiction book I've read in a long time and now I'm like hooked on fiction, so I want to get into more more fiction, but that's how I felt when I read that book. I go, wow, what a beautiful way to the unfortunate clear-cutting of a huge forest. He described it as sort of coming upon this huge clear-cut space, this big arcing hill that was clear-cut of old trees. And he described it like the stubble on a bald man's head.

`0:09:58`

Which was just like my what a great way to describe like clear cut trunks are left, short trunks are left and just like desolate emptiness. Nothing that's bald people. Man, the the the thing that really stands out in that is sometimes you read that and you'll see something like that you feel like oh I need to try so hard when I write and you're using this word contrived. Like contrived needs like a big red danger sign like do not go Yes. Because the way that that sort of elegance often comes out is exactly what you're saying earlier. I don't know where that came from. It comes out of the intuitive world, not the conscious world. I I believe so. I think most things that are good come off of the intuitive world, the gut basically. It's