Keep Going

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When we’re close to the finish line or the end of a project, we’ll hear a voice that says: “Keep going.”

Why is that, though?

It’s because if we hesitate for a moment, or stop to take a break, it’ll cost us time, resources, or even the prospect of finishing our goal.

More importantly, we keep going because if we don’t, we might end up quitting. And if we quit, what’s to say we’ll ever start on that project again?

Obviously, there is a limit to anything we do. Time. Energy. Focus. We cannot keep going forever. We cannot stay awake 24/7. At some point, we have to rest, recharge.

But to “keep going” doesn’t mean that we do the impossible. Rather, it’s to encourage us to finish what we started. Because when we’re close to the finish line, close to the end of a project, it’s not uncommon for us to slack off, to take it easy because we’re almost there. But we’re not there until we’ve crossed the finish line.

Sculpture

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When we sculpt something with our hands, it’s as if we’re bringing something to life. When we carve it, mold it with our fingers, or click the pieces together (as with Legos), we give reality to our imagination–making it physical, tangible.

Sculpting can be as simple as binding sticks together, or as complex as building a robot. The fun part about it is that we see it come to life before our eyes, interacting with it during the creative process.

When we mess up, we can take the sculpture apart, or just a piece of it. With clay, we roll it up into a ball, stretch it, pull it apart, then press it together again until it’s the shape we want it to be. With wood, it’s cut and sanded and glued together with other pieces of wood. Regardless of the material, whether it be metal, glass, or plastic, raw material is turned into something creative, coexisting with us and the environment as an entity drawn from our imagination.

Posted in Art

Drawing

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A drawing can take a variety of forms. It can be a sketch on paper, canvas, napkin, or in the digital canvas of a computer screen. A drawing can be realistic, abstract, cartoonish, or geometric.

It’s different from writing in that it illustrates our ideas rather than symbolize them with words. A single word has the power to evoke a number of images in our mind, whereas a drawing concretizes thoughts into images. It gives our ideas a particular shape, form, and texture.

Like writing, drawing is a craft that requires hours and hours of practice. The more we practice, the easier it is to illustrate what we want, and to give it the right size, shape, and texture. Likewise, our muscle memory and motor skills become adept to creating an accurate representation of the object we’re drawing. Like anything someone is an expert in, it becomes more polished with time.

But even if we’re not professional illustrators, drawing gives us the ability to put our imagination down onto paper. And whether it’s there in the form of ink, graphite or pixels, we can see, to varying degrees, what the mind sees.

Posted in Art

Building a Story

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When building a story, it starts off with a bunch of ideas that become the foundation for it. Even though we don’t know yet who all the characters are, what the story arcs are, or even how it will end, it will become clearer as we add more layers and ideas to the story.

Since we’ve had the story in our mind for awhile, we know what kind of story it will be (i.e. what genre), where it will take place (i.e. the setting), and what events should occur (the basic plot). But what’s unclear to us is how all these parts integrate, such as the chapters, and how they connect and lead up to the resolution.

Some ideas won’t be in the story at all. It could be chapters, dialogue, or characters. It would be similar to looking at a palette of colors to paint a house with, reducing them to a handful, then deciding on a couple to use throughout the house. The rest of the colors are discarded.

Building a story is a similar process. Fortunately, if we don’t like something, we can just edit it in the drafts. And even then, we might have to add more into the story as it takes shape and evolves into something that is real to us.

Writing

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Writing can be daunting and or exhilarating. It can feel like we’re staring at a blank page for hours on end, or it can come easily as we type everything that comes to mind. When we’re typing at a measly 1 word per minute, or deleting everything on the page, it’s because we aren’t sure of where to start. But if the goal and the topic is as clear as day, we can hardly contain ourselves as we pour our thoughts and ideas onto the page.

But whatever the case may be, one thing that I’ve learned about writing is that it’s a discipline. It’s something that must be practiced in the same way a sport requires practice, or learning the piano or math requires practices. When we don’t practice, it’s hard to keep up with where we left off. It’s as if the muscle memory in our fingers haven’t been trained in awhile. It needs practice to maintain the same level of word count and speed that was cultivated from previous writing sessions.

Some days will be hard, and some days will be easy regardless of how long we’ve been writing. Some days we won’t want to write. We’d rather take the day off, make an excuse not to write. But that doesn’t help us to reach our goal, which is to become better writers, and to finish short stories, novels, essays, whatever it may be.

I like to set short, easy goals in the beginning. 500 or 600 words to start with. Then build up the word count from there. Overtime, it’ll get easier to reach the goal, and then we’ll have to increase it to a 1,000 or 1,200 words. And if we keep writing, even that will get easy.

At some point, we’ll reach our limit: a feasible but challenging amount of words to write each day. We’ll know we got there because of the hard work and discipline we put into writing. After that, writing a lengthy book or a series won’t seem impossible as it once did.

New Goals

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Pursuing new goals isn’t as easy as it sounds. We often get habituated in the routines and goals we’ve already pursued–doing what comes familiar to us–sticking to our comfort zone. New goals can be intimidating as a result. To pursue them is kind of like admitting to ourselves that the old ones are flawed or aren’t good enough.

New goals can set us on a path of self-discovery, as well as one of struggle or disappointment. Examples of new goals include learning a new language, learning a musical instrument, traveling somewhere new, getting a new job, moving to a new location, or making art that is different from what we’ve already done (maybe commercially risky). There is risk to all of these, and there is no guarantee of their being positive outcomes or success either.

But pursuing something new can reveal something about ourselves. We could discover things that we do or don’t like, talents we might not have known about, and see the world in a completely different way.

Usually, a new goal springs from a need that isn’t being met. It could spring from curiosity, or because we’re unhappy in our current situation. Either way, if we don’t at least consider new goals, we might remain stagnant where we are.

Trial and Error

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Trial and error is common in any endeavor. We learn by the error, as well as from the successes of the trial. We figure out what works, and then we repeat this once we’ve ironed it out.

But there comes a point when nothing seems to work. No matter what we try, no progress is being made. This has occurred with me when working on a cover for one of my books. I’ll experiment with the colors, the design, the title placement, and no matter how much I modify them, nothing seems to work.

At some point, I question my own ability, and wonder if I should just hire someone or give myself a break. When you reach that level of frustration, you really want to quit.

But if I work on the cover long enough, I’ll come to realize that I was actually going in the wrong direction. The problem had nothing to do with the color scheme, design, or the title placement. The problem was the concept of the cover. I had to start over, look at it from a different angle.

After a few hours of working on this new cover, I’ll discover that it’s ten times better than what I had originally designed.

What I’ve learned about making my own covers is that it isn’t the details that are the most important thing, but the concept behind it. The concept is what conveys a certain look, mood, and appeal. No matter how many variations I might come up with on a design, starting over can be the best step forward.

Purpose

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Purpose is behind everything. Study nature without purpose and it begs the question: Why are you studying it? Why even start with that plant or that rock? Why not spend your time doing something else if there is no purpose to them?

What is purpose? Purpose is the goal behind what we do. It gives a motivation toward why we are working toward something. In the example above, knowledge or understanding can be the purpose behind studying nature. And the purpose behind that is to know what they are–how they can be used for medicine, agriculture, or engineering. When purpose is removed from what we do or study, it’s as if we’re doing things on autopilot.

For example, we know intuitively that we need to work to earn a paycheck, which allows us to pay the bills, to have electricity, shelter, to eat, etc. But without knowing what truly motivates us, we are left wanting more from life, unsatisfied and unfulfilled from what we have.

It’s as if there is nothing beyond the horizon except a job and a paycheck. We don’t see the other opportunities that are available. The things we can learn or spend our time doing that maximizes our talents and potential. That purpose can start off as a hobby, and grow into something much more. And after we’ve found out what that is, it can inspire us to learn and to create, and we begin to see life in an exciting and meaningful way.

Macrocosm

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A macrocosm is analogous to looking at the world from a philosophic point of view. It paints a broad picture to encapsulate and explain all the variances that occur within it. It might have a ring of truth to it, something that we can identify with, relate to, but does it hold up overtime? And what about the nuances–the facts that diverge from it, deviate from its conclusions?

In novels, a macrocosm could be the world that is created within the story. Thus, the microcosm is the the narrative that follows the protagonist, not to mention the characters and the antagonist. A macrocosm is like the setting, whereas the microcosm is the plot of the story. They work side by side since the macrocosm is just the staging (the background) of the story, whereas the plot is the main focus.

But when it comes to knowledge about the world in relation to our experience, there seems to be a disconnect between the two. People seem to either tilt toward a macroscopic lens, or a microscopic one. From the macroscopic lens, they try to explain things in grandiose terms (the big picture), elucidating laws and principles while ignoring the variances, subtleties, the grey areas that exist. Those that tend to look at the world microscopically look at the world from their own circumstance, anecdotally, or from their own specialized field (i.e. history, economics, literature, etc.).

Both viewpoints give an incomplete picture, since they either miss the principles and laws that are at work (the big picture), or the minute details and variances that do not fit neatly within broader terms.

The reason why a book can harmonize the macrocosm and microcosm so inseparably is because it doesn’t need to be about everything: taking into account every natural law, or every human experience. It only needs to be about the protagonist and their story arc.

At the end of a story, we want to know what happens to them, how they are affected by the trials that they overcame and faced. Therefore, there’s no ambiguity or confusion about what the story is about. It had a clear goal in mind. There’s no tangent about some irrelevant aspect of their world, or about some side character that had no relevance to the plot. A story is organized in such a way that there is in order, a goal, a conclusion.

In a book, the story encapsulates a philosophic system based on the world and the outcome, whether it is dystopian or utopian, pessimistic or optimistic, because the author paints a world that the characters live in. Obviously, the world we live in is not the same as a book. Our world is indifferent, impartial to our thoughts, wants, and needs. We must adapt to it, learn, grow, and apply ourselves in a way that conform to the environment.

Thus, the macrocosm of our world, which we call reality (or the objective world), is just the setting for which we pursue the values we believe in (our microcosm). Although our values may change with time, we cannot change reality in the same manner (i.e. by thought or will alone). We can modify the environment, make it suitable and habitable, but we cannot bend the rules which govern the world. That’s where science comes in–understanding the rules which underly the natural order of things.

There is a difference between the life we live, and the world in which we live in. When we try to explain everything from our experience, we try to explain it from a microscopic lens. We ignore the fact that reality cannot be bent, twisted, or reshaped arbitrarily. It is what it is despite how we would like it to be. When we try to explain reality from the world we live in, we ignore the life we live, including the domains of morality, creativity, family, happiness, etc.

As a result, each perspective, on its own, gives us an inaccurate representation of the whole picture. It creates a false dichotomy where we either look at things naturalistically (materialistically), or humanistically (based on our judgments, needs, wants, etc.). Because both perspectives are separate and distinct, we must look at things from another lens.

Within the microcosm of our experience, it is always directed toward achieving something, reaching toward a goal. Life cannot be lived passively, since change can only happen when we act–work toward a goal. That goal can be survival, comfort, happiness, knowledge, etc.

The history of science and mathematics has been a laborous and difficult climb toward understanding the reality we live in. It has made possible technological innovations, medicine, you name it, which have made life at present incalculably more comfortable and convenient compared to centuries ago. Thus, we must frame the macrocosm and the microcosm not as distinct, passive, and neutral domains, but as ones being guided by a purpose. That purpose is the reason why we undertake them and study them: to improve our lives.

Therefore the microcosm of our life isn’t just a set of random experiences, emotions and feelings, but one guided toward improving life. In the same way, the macrocosm isn’t just a set of laws and facts about nature, but an encyclopedia of knowledge to help us advance science, technology, and medicine, and thus, to make our world safer, and to reduce suffering.

I think we so often forget the reason and purpose behind why we study the sciences and humanities in the first place. It’s as if we undertake them just for the sake of a degree, a job, and without a perspective of how different life would be without the things we take for granted (i.e. clean water, electricity, medicine, etc.). It’s why people sometimes look at these fields as just being a collection of facts, dates, and names to memorize, rather than having a practical purpose: to teach us how to build and engineer the impossible, and to learn how to live better.

Microcosm

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When we look at the microcosm of a structure or system, we focus on the particulars rather than the whole picture itself. When we become focused on the particulars, we look at the details, the minute components that make up the whole.

But we might end up so fixated on the details that we forget about the big picture. For a writer, it’s kind of like focusing on editing one chapter of a story, then a paragraph of that chapter (maybe even a sentence), and then ignoring the rest of the chapter.

Or it’s like a scientist that studies a plant, and then the leaves of that plant, and the cells of that plant, and the organelles of the cell, and the molecules that compose the organelles, and then they get so lost in studying the molecules that they forget why they were studying the plant in the first place.

To study the microcosm of anything can give us insight and knowledge of the components and mechanisms which function and operate within a structure or system. But how far do we go in our study? At what point do we stop analyzing each minuscule detail to the point that we lose sight of our goal, which is to understand the big picture, rather than the countless tangents and the endless number of microcosms it can lead us down?