Why haven’t you written a short story yet? What are you waiting for? These two questions have often arisen in my brain waves during the summer months of the pandemic. I’m quick to counter them with excuses: I’m scared, I don’t have good ideas, I prefer to write nonfiction. The biggest excuse: I’m waiting for the right storyline to jump at me. Like it’s going to hit me in the face one morning and the words will come tumbling out of me like a mudslide. No writers block, no problems: the perfect story. 

The problem with the perfect story: it doesn’t exist. The stories that engage us, change us, embed themselves in us were crafted and molded into the stories presented to us. The stories that make us cry, laugh, and feel things didn’t have that power when they were simply ideas. Seeds. Authors spend months planning a story, months finding the perfect words, and months editing it to perfection. The idea that the perfect storyline will manifest at an opportune time is an excuse to never start. I think we all do this, in some way or another. We put off starting what we dream of because we’re afraid we’ll find out it’s not for us. We’ve spent weeks, months, years dreaming of this life, and we’re afraid to find out we might be bad.

Beyond the bad, growth and goodness are waiting for you. That initial fear of failing comes at us like a towering, breaking wave. Swimming over it is impossible, so we stand at the shore, our dream at the distant horizon, unreachable. The impossibility of getting over the first wave is overwhelming; You’re comfortable gazing at your sunset dream from the shore, never getting your toes wet. What if instead of trying to get over the wave, you dove head first into it, swimming in it, beneath the weight of it. If you take that risk, you’ll often find you can make it to the other side. It’s scary and maybe difficult, but we can make it through. Once you clear it, the rest of the waves become bumps in the road instead of obstacles pummeling you back to shore. Before you know it, the waves are little ridges in the background, the calm sea the only thing in front of you. 

We tend to hyperfocus on the bad and the what-if’s and in that, we forget that goodness awaits us on the other side. When we dive under that first wave, we come out of it with new knowledge. We have to make it through the bad first, but when we do, we learn things we wouldn’t have, see things we couldn’t have. We’re stretched in ways we didn’t expect. In that lies growth, and from growth comes goodness. 

I finally accepted the notion of a bad story. I admitted a storyline would not simply manifest one morning. I came to terms with diving into the bad ideas floating around in my brain and swimming with them for a while. That’s the only way I was going to learn, and so I did it. 

Yesterday evening I punched in a ‘period’ with satisfaction, marking the end of the first story I’ve written. It is completely awful and will likely never see the light of day, but I wrote it. I’ve learned a little bit about what doesn’t work and what I need to do differently when I attempt the next one, the next wave barreling towards me. 

What’s your breaking wave? What’s the thing you desperately want to do, but the start seems daunting? Whatever it is, dive into it, swim with it, go after at it. I know what’s on the other side, and I assure you it’s not as scary as I believed it to be. We have to flirt with failure for a moment, knowing that when we’re through with it we’ll be better off. The broken heart is perfect soil for growth and goodness to thrive. 

I laughed and cringed at my story when I finished. It was better and worse than I’d expected in so many ways, and I’m reveling in the comfort of getting the first wave behind me. The next one won’t be perfect, but it will be easier, better. I’m tucking this story away for a while. I hope to look back at it down the road and see how far my stories have come, knowing that the growth and goodness wouldn’t have been possible without that first, heartbreaking wave.