The Tip Of A Wish
Musings on beginnings and doing things badly
“If one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm — and that’s a lie… That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity. Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you......” Vincent Van Gogh
It doesn’t take much to lose the habit of daily writing. A weekend away, too many banal to-do’s, a lazier morning or two, and suddenly a day is missed and then another and all of a sudden I can’t quite remember the last time I sat and put words to a page. It hasn’t been long- a week at most- but it suddenly feels so.
It is testament to the idea I have always held that habits are hard to cultivate but all too easy to break. But it is also true that the resurrection of anything just takes a combination of intent and beginning. It doesn’t necessarily need to be anymore complicated than that.
So much time can be wasted in the lamenting that something has been dropped which is time that could just as easily be used to simply pick it up again. Even thinking has trade offs. The continuation and the sustenance of something will- eventually- need its own tricks of the heart and mind, but beginning- well it is just that. Beginning.
There’s a quote from the Buddha that I once heard but now struggle to find anywhere that said something like ‘all intention relies on the tip of a wish’. ‘Wishing’ is often reduced to singular thoughts held aloft by seemingly childish rituals; making a wish when you blow out your birthday candles, wishing on the first star of the night, always with the caution not to tell anyone, lest it doesn’t come true. But wishing is actually more potent than those moments can make it seem. We need first and foremost to want something for it to happen. So long as we don’t then let the wanting become its own procrastination.
In the main we always want for something that is well beyond the remit of where we are; a more fully formed idea of the place we’d like to eventually find ourself. More physically healthy and strong, celebrating the finished novel, running the more fully fledged business, sat amidst the garden as it might look a decade or even more down the line is all a necessary part of the imagining. But by comparison the very beginnings of anything rarely look like much and we rarely limit our wishes to simply wanting to start. And yet perhaps we should.
All the maybes and the wondering and the whats ifs’ can only ever stay as musings of the mind unless we take the first step, before deciding the next day to take another. We can feel a long way from good habits, from desired outcomes, from starting something afresh- or from picking up something lost- but the truth is we are never more than a day away from it. Possibly less. We have an almost unlimited capacity for conjuring up reasons why not- I marvel at the inventiveness of the mind when it comes to the excuses it can find or the time it can waste. It always reminds me of my four year old self who was a creative genius in trying to get out of playing her pint sized violin; the pull of a game, the imperative of a snack, the dislike of her teacher, the smell- even- of the polish. ‘Of course I have to breathe it in’ I would insist, all wide eyed and apoparently sincere, ‘the violin is so close to my nose’. No matter how hard my mother tried to argue one excuse away, I had another lined up behind. And the adult version of myself can be just as relentless.
And yet there is immense satisfaction in doing the very things we resist. In being willing to begin, badly if necessary, but begin nonetheless. It can feel like we have won a small battle, which we have. The only way to silence the voices in our heads which tell us to avoid the very thing we most want to do, or know we should be doing, is by defiantly doing it anyway. And we best do that by not engaging in the conversation in the first place.
In her well known book on the art and act of writing entitled ‘Bird By Bird’, Anne Lamott speaks of the imperative of writing ‘the first shitty draft’. Of no matter what happens, getting words on paper without worrying at all about their quality. (She also mentions hoping you aren’t then killed in a car accident and everyone thinks that was your magnus opus - but that is by the by). The point is get the words down, do it without thinking too much, let it be shitty if it has to be, but just do it. Just begin and then you are doing it. Even in doing something badly (and of course it doesn’t need to be writing, it can be anything- fill in your own blank) you are cultivating the habit to resist resistance, to silence the critics, to fend off the inventive four year old self who will never tire of excuses. You are starting before the conversation as to why you shouldn’t gets in the way. You are beginning, in the only place possible but also the most potent place available; at the very start, at the very tip of the wish.
'Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.' William Hutchinson Murray - mountaineer
The Tom Grass Spirit of Adventure Writing Prize
Earlier this year a dear friend of many decades tragically died. In his honour, his family and friends have spent the months since his death pouring their energy into the creation of a writing prize which is now open for submissions.
Tom was an extraordinary man. He once said to me - in our twenties- that the cool people were always the off centre squares; unwittingly describing himself. Whilst he might well have struggled to fit into any of the conventions of normal life, he lived outside of them in the most remarkable way. So often those of us who trod a more conventional life path lived vicariously through him. He was at once a writer, a creative, an adventurer and a humanitarian. He spoke in prose that often felt lifted from a novel but was just as adept at making just about anything - from tiny pottery creatures for his godchildren to fully working trebochets, big enough to catapult a man.
The Tom Grass Spirit of Adventure Literary Prize is a writing prize dedicated to celebrating this very spirit. Funded by family and friends and sponsored by Steppes travel, it is now open for submissions- for all established or emerging writers, from anywhere in the world, over the age of 25.
A description of what they are looking for is below- but more details can also be found via the website. Please do forward to any established or aspiring writers.
‘The prize is for a short piece of stand-alone prose in either Fiction or Non-Fiction (1,500 - 3,000 words). It can be adapted from a longer work but must be satisfying to read by itself. The prize invites writers from all walks of life, whether writing a short story, essay, memoir, piece of reportage, historical investigation, or other hybrid form, as long as the writer reflects the sensibility of the prize. The prize is not aimed at the action-adventure genre nor limited to the idea of physical adventure. We invite writers to grapple with the spirit of adventure in any way they interpret. Pieces will be read and judged on their literary merit and their engagement with the general reader.’