“Your mind is like a dirty tap.”

That’s what Ed Sheeran, singer/song writer/musician/record producer, has said.

That tap has to run for a while before the water gets clear.

To be clear (ha!), Ed wasn’t talking about water, and neither am I.

I’m talking about ideas.

Do you expect your story or painting or garden design or anything else creative to be crystal clear the moment you get to work on it?

I’ve got some good news for you: ideas don’t usually work that way.

So cut yourself some slack.

The first draft or sketch is going to be wonky with maybe a few lovely parts.

But mostly, it’s going to look like dirty water.

Ed says, “dirty tap.”

I call it the first pancake.

You know how that first pancake is never the best?

But you don’t dump all the pancake batter based on the appearance of that first pancake, do you?

Of course not.

You adjust the heat, add more butter or oil, watch that second pancake a bit more closely.

And voila! A better pancake.

But there’s still a whole bowl of batter to get through.

And each pancake gets a bit better, a bit more pancake-looking instead of an amoeba, a bit more fluffy and less gloopy in the center.

Your attention to pancake details is what makes each successive pancake better and better.

So why would you think that your first draft or sketch would be your best?

It’s not going to be. (Unless you’re Hemingway or whatever artist is the equivalent of Hemingway and his first-draft success.)

But this is good news for you!

Spill everything on the paper.

Use those six-dollar words that only you know the definition of.

Plop tulip bulbs in every garden corner, even if it’s a dark corner.

Include characters that have no business being in a middle-grade novel.

That weird pencil line on your sketch that makes your horse look like an elephant?

Don’t worry about it.

Not yet.

Just get everything out of your system.

Get it “done.”

Then, pat yourself on the back because you’ve created Something.

Now take a deep breath.

Go back to the beginning.

Reread your draft.

Make changes as you go along.

Redirect your rambles.

Toss out meaningless characters, or give them meaning, or be like Dr. Frankenstein and mash a few characters together to make one good one.

Turn your posh six-dollar words into more relatable words.

Plot your garden so that all the tulip bulbs are in the sun.

Pretty soon you don’t have dirty water or amoeba pancakes anymore.

You have something that makes sense.

You have something that others can look at and understand and appreciate and be amazed by.

(One last thing, because all this talk about pancakes made me hungry. If you’re looking for a pancake from an easy mix with relatively clean ingredients, try gluten-free Kodiak Cakes. Five grams of sugar in three pancakes with seven grams of protein. Available at grocery stores.)

Thank you, Ed Sheeran, for letting your dirty tap run and for being part of the world of music.

Thank YOU for reading this post.

Until next time,

~ Gail

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