How struggle grows creativity

This post begins with viniculture and ends with your created masterpiece.

Why viniculture? Because viniculture is seriously hard. See, wine comes from grapes. And grapes are relatively “easy” to grow, but good wine is really difficult to make. If you want good wine, you have to make your grapes struggle for it.

Tasy, tasty grapes

First, the soil you grow your grapes in is important. Grapes are happy growing in hot places, and they’ll grow in lots of different types of soil. But what’s interesting about grapes is that, while they will grow faster and higher in nutrient-rich, fertile, easy soil, they will grow tastier wine if planted in dry, rocky, difficult soil.

Secondly, how you allow the vine to grow is important. You are advised to prune them regularly, and harshly. At the end of the vine’s first year, you prune off all the growth that occurred that year. Even if the vine has grown really well and it’s looking really pretty, you chop it. All of it. And after that, the wine it produces in every year after that will be that much more delicious as a direct result of the first drastic pruning.

So in order to achieve the delicious wine, you have to cause your grapes to struggle and struggle to the point of near-disaster.

How is this like creating? Some of the best books were written out of the author’s struggle to create them. Some of the best paintings were created through years of trial and error, looking for “the right type of light” or “the perfect shade of blue”. (Specific examples to be discussed in a later post.)

So my point is, don’t be discouraged when creating is difficult. The best things come out of our struggles.

Side note: If you’re looking for an editor to help you struggle with your manuscript and sort out the rose from the thorns, I’m here to help! Shoot me an email today (see my Contact Us page).