I’ve had this 43 Folders post up in a browser tab for something like four days because I’d meant to write something quick but thoughtful about it for this blog. But I wanted to wait until I had time for thoughtful part. Which still has not arrived. So you get quick, because I have to close this tab, and besides, that’s probably all you wanted anyway. All of which underscores the point of 43 Folders post, which discussed Ze Frank‘s brain crack video – a funny and slightly scatological (the end of the video is not kid appropriate) take on the idea that if you wait until you can execute a great idea perfectly, you’ll never start. And that all those unused ideas just hang around in our brains, wasting space.
This struck me because it reminded me of Chesterton’s line, “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” It also reminded me a lot of the fiction writing process. When I was younger, I would sometimes find my writing paralyzed by the thought that if I happened to be producing a work of great genius, then each word should be perfect and worthy of the idea I was trying to express. Needless to say I became a better and more productive writer when I realized that I was not a great writer nor was I producing a work of genius. But I could, by writing and rewriting enough in a workmanlike way, sometimes turn out pieces that were worth reading. And finally thanks to synchronicity, a related post popped into my Google reader feed yesterday – “Quantity Equals Quality if You Fail a Lot!” over at Marketing & Strategy innovation blog. I won’t repeat it all here, but it’s a good story about a pottery class in which the whole point of this post is perfectly illustrated.
