Love for Your Ideas
When an idea comes to me, I have a choice. If I accept the idea, it becomes my responsibility to bring it into the real world and do it justice. For a long time, I struggled with creative pressure. Rushing yourself, demanding that an idea be flawless on the first try, telling yourself you lack the skills to build it, or waiting for some ideal moment in the future: all of these are creative blocks. And you have probably heard this voice in your own head: there is no point starting this, because someone else has already done it better.
Caring for an idea means taking responsibility to bring it to life, giving it the time and the effort it deserves, without rushing it or demanding that it be flawless.
Erik Thor, Why I Love
What Writing Taught Me About Creation
The seventeen-year-old manuscript
At seventeen, I sat down and decided that by eighteen, I had to be a published author. When my friends were hanging out at the mall or playing video games, I was sitting at my desk writing manuscripts. I rushed chapters and took shortcuts because I wanted to get the book done as quickly as possible. When I looked at the final result, I couldn’t even stand to read it, let alone share it with anyone. So I hit delete.
When judgment shows up
Self-judgment gets a bad name in creative circles, but in my experience, it is just an editor who shows up to work too early. Judgment is what has made me grow as a writer. What I had to learn was when. Not during. I let myself be creative first and critical afterwards. If I was critical too early, I’d shut down good ideas before they had time to grow.
Cutting 100,000 Words Down to Thirty
When I started out writing Why I Love, I told my friends I was just writing “something small and simple.” I had to convince myself I wasn’t trying to write a bestseller just to protect the draft from my own expectations.
Because I wanted to write a personal book about not hiding behind experts, I naturally began by reading a hundred books by experts first. For months, I treated my own life story as a university dissertation where I refused to trust a single human feeling of my own unless a professor backed me up.
Even after I stopped hiding behind academic footnotes, my brain found a new way to procrastinate: instead of finishing the book, I just kept adding to it. At one point, this “small and simple” project reached 100,000 words. I had written two and a half different books by accident, and I couldn’t even remember which chapter held which argument anymore.
I asked myself how much longer I’d like to work on this idea. With my son arriving in November, I realized I wanted this book to be about the first third of my life, up until the day I became a parent. After deleting all the unnecessary work and all the arguments I was unhappy with, I ended back at 30,000 words. I anchor my creativity in who I am today and what my current level, age, and wisdom is.
“One thing this has taught me is that an idea doesn’t have to carry me all the way across the finish line. It just has to carry me one step closer. Letting go of those extra seventy thousand words felt like opening a window in a stuffy room.”
Micro-test quiz with 10 questions
Love For Your Ideas Match
Check off statements above to calculate your match score.
Reflection & Practice
Giving Your Ideas Space
What creative idea keeps popping up in your head, and what would happen if you gave it thirty minutes today? What messy first draft sits hidden in your drawer or hard drive because you felt embarrassed by it, and what if finishing it mattered more than making it flawless?
Continue Your Journey
Take the Eight Practices of Love Test
See how your love for your ideas compares with your care for your work, your relationships, and the truth across 48 reflective questions.
Explore the Book Why I Love
Read Chapter 10 of Why I Love on creative blocks, self-judgment, and finishing what you start.
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