What you discover in a failed quest may be the true quest you were meant to pursue.
I have two new books that will be coming out this summer. The first is called Make Something Beautiful: The Paradoxes of Creativity and How to Make Them Work for You. It’s a gift book taking some of the principles from The Creative Wild and framing them within the context of 21 different paradoxes of creativity.
The second is Brand Something Beautiful: Branding for Artists, Writers, and Other Creatives. It’s a workbook, essentially, a step-by-step guide on how to create a brand if you are a creative solopreneur or small creative firm. The publisher says August. My guess is closer to September for both, so stay tuned.
But what I want to write about today is neither of those books. Instead, it’s about a new book (or really, book idea) that may never be a book. I won’t go into the subject of it yet since it is still being formed.
So why tell you about a book I cannot tell you about? Because of what it leads to.
Even though it may never be a book, the practice of thinking about it, making notes, doing research, and generally mulling it over has led me to some interesting places.
The first was in getting the reaction of people with whom I shared the idea. All loved it. Always a nice first step.
The second was a quick prompt on ChatGPT about the concept and some of the research related to it. The result was both incredible (some truly stunning details, ideas and research findings that, on my own, would have taken weeks) and devastating (there’s really no need or a book when AI can spew forth much of the same information).
Often with creative work, when you realize your idea has been (or could be) done by others or that it may not have the potential you hoped for, most of us see two choices: Pursue it anyway—damn the torpedoes and all that—or give up.
But there’s a third way.
Pursue the idea even if you sense it is doomed. Engage the quest despite all the odds against you.
The reason for this approach is quite simple, but one I often forget: It’s not so much about where the idea starts or is going, but where the idea takes you.
I find myself periodically circling back to the quote by Martin Buber that I used at the start of Hidden Travel: “All journeys have their secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” And therein lies the reason for pursuing the quest, even if it seems hopeless.
Follow the quest and it will take you places you would not otherwise have gone: geographically, creatively, emotionally, and even spiritually. I’m already finding this to be true with this book idea. Physically going to some of the places I want to write about for the book is exposing me to both locations and ideas I’ve never visited before.
The ideas and even more, the shaping of you, that come will be unexpected and, right now, both unknown and unknowable. Great. Do it anyway. Pursue the quest. Act on the dream even if it seems impractical. Take the next steps because something brought you to this place of yearning, this desire for pursuit. Follow that until the trail runs out.
It may be a doomed quest. But it is a quest. And if you’re like me, that alone has an allure that is hard to resist.
This post first appeared on my Substack at stevebrock.substack.com
