Evanna Lynch Instagram – Pablo by the pond 🌳
I’m finding the process of watching the tadpoles evolve very inspiring in unexpected ways. I can’t get over how long their evolution into frogs takes! When they arrived I expected it would be: week 1: tadpoles, week 2: legs, week 3: leaping off lily pads, week 4: to the moon! 🚀 But actually it has been weeks and weeks of them just swimming as tadpoles munching their way through the pond. They eat and eat with barely perceptible changes to their shape. I grow impatient with them. ‘Hurry up and be frogs already’ 😕 But it’s reminding me how slow and arduous the process of growth is. It’s day upon day of consistent munching, resting, repeating. You trust the process even on days when the work bears no tangible fruit. I get bored and ignore them for a few days, then come back and feel gratified by the small visible changes. If the tadpoles listened to my inner monologue they’d have given up long ago and withered away to the bottom of the pond.
The creative process is the same of course. I have had to make my life SO boring in order to make any progress with my book. I’ve quit almost everything that distracts me from it. I get so frustrated on days when I’ve worked hard and yet seem to have made no progress, or indeed have taken a step backwards. But, as the tadpoles remind me, the human eye is not sophisticated enough to perceive some of the most profound internal growth. Just show up and do your munching/writing.
The thing I’m finding most difficult about writing is the life stuff in between. I love being in the creative vortex but when the day ends and I have to do all the boring admin of keeping myself alive, it takes me out of it again. I have to shower AGAIN??? That took me a flipping hour yesterday. All this cooking, going for walks, messaging people back. I wish I could take a couple weeks and bank up sleep and food so I could fully surrender to fantasyland and stay in the world of the book. Writing a book is like living two lives and the real life one costs far too much energy. But it is teaching me patience and discipline, and when I forget, the tadpoles are still there doing their thing. 🪷 | Posted on 06/Jun/2024 17:03:45
