Begin where you are

Halfway through last year I stopped in my tracks with posting essays because I wanted to take some time to figure my writing out. I didn’t stop writing (that would have led to sure misery), but I stopped sharing my writing publicly, because I felt it was important that I first perfect a consistent style. It’s six months later and I still haven’t figured it out. I still don’t have a consistent style. But at least now I’ve resigned myself to the lowly position of beginning where I am.

There was a good rationale for my absence, or so I claim. I wanted to refine my voice and perfect what I was presenting to the world. I wanted to read some of my favorite authors (I really like Ernest Hemingway, William Zinsser, Benjamin Hoff, and Julia Cameron) and see which elements of their voices I could carry forward into my own. I also wanted to look at the format and structure of different writing outlets I admire. In terms of format, I particularly like David Sedaris for essays and the Smithsonian for science writing. I thought I could study these sources and learn from them so I could improve my own writing. Then I could present a more refined writing style to the world.

We all do this. We tell ourselves that we’ll begin sharing our ideas WHEN _______(fill in the blank)____. We feel justified in holding back. There are just some more sources we want to consult. There is more refining that needs to be done. Or, like I did with my first book, one more round of proofreading is needed. God forbid we make a mistake in public. God forbid we share our humble beginnings. Doing that might actually make the whole thing look possible to other beginners!

When you read the success stories of famous authors, there is always a backstory of humble beginnings. Many of them began writing before the advent of the internet, so we don’t often have access to these humble beginnings, but it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Author Stephen King tells of submitting his stories as a kid to magazines and pinning the hundreds of rejection letters he received on a nail above his desk. In his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he says, “By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.” We only see his prolific career now, not these early stories, so we assume that success is the only thing that needs to be shared. We assume that we should file away our little creative experiments until we have something noteworthy to share.

When I was studying the scientific method during the first year of my PhD at the Leonard and Jayne Abess Center, we were taught the importance of publishing negative results. The scientific community encourages sharing the findings of experiments even when they don’t support the hypothesis, because we can all learn something even from negative findings. It keeps other scientists from trying the same thing to no avail and stimulates new ideas around alternative hypotheses. Granted, scientists don’t always follow this ethos, as you can see by the number of publications sharing supportive findings rather than negative findings, but in theory the sharing of all findings is good because it encourages us to learn and grow as a community.

I spend a lot of my professional time with animal caregivers at zoos and other animal facilities, and I especially love hearing the fresh and interesting ideas coming from passionate young people who spend their time watching the animals and wondering. They often feel too scared to share their observations and ideas with a wider community because they feel that they don’t have the right scientific qualifications or seniority to do so, but often the best new ideas come from fresh minds like theirs with fresh ways of seeing. These brilliant animal caregivers sometimes feel comfortable sharing their ideas with me, but I would like to figure out how I can help them share their great ideas more widely so that more people can benefit from their insights and it can stimulate collective new thought on how to improve animals’ lives.

In this spirit of collective growth, I would like to encourage you (and me, when I inevitably forget) to begin where you are with sharing your ideas. I know how scary it can be, because I’m as terrified as anyone at the thought of sounding dumb, but I think we all have some seriously good ideas rattling around inside our brains. If only we would let them see the light of day, those ideas might actually be refined by others and implemented to create a positive impact.

Nowadays it’s easier than ever to start a blog for free and write down what you think. You can also post your photos or art or music on blogs and write little descriptions to let people know your thought process. To me, the thought process behind creative work is often just as interesting as the work itself. It’s then quite easy to share these posts on social media with our friends, family, and colleagues. This last bit is something I’m still working up the courage to do…

If you need a bit of liquid courage to share your ideas (I definitely do), I would recommend writing your ideas down and sharing them first thing in the morning after you’ve had a strong coffee or tea. For some reason caffeine elates me and makes my thinking more expansive and daring. I have more faith in the good of humanity and in the merit of my ideas when I’m caffeinated. Sadly, this elevated mood doesn’t usually last all day, but I make the most of it while I can. The other trick I find is to get your thoughts down as quickly as your fingers will type, at least one page if you can, and then re-read and edit it only once. Then post it on your blog and be done. Don’t look at it again for at least another month or two. The next day get on with the next idea, and so on. Yes, you will produce some junk in the process, but you will also produce pearls. I regret to inform you that you won’t know the junk from the pearls until much later.

I think we should be supportive of each other in beginning where we are. We often are not in a position to judge our own work when it’s in its early stages. This does not mean that it should be hidden from the world, however. Let your ideas inspire other people’s ideas by sharing them publicly. Take that tiny step and begin today.