The Muddle in the Middle by Nancy L. Eady

One of my (many) hobbies is art. Once a week during my lunch hour, I go to art lessons at a studio down the street from my law firm. Sometimes I paint with acrylic paint, sometimes watercolor, and sometimes oil. Other mediums I have tried include pastels, which are compressed chalk-like color sticks, and graphite pencils.

With every art project, I hit a point where I am convinced that I am just wasting my time with the painting. I feel I will never work out the kinks, and when done, the picture will look like a first grader’s finger painting.

For example, this is a picture of my current project:

In the future, this will portray Shadow, the first dog my husband and I had, based on a picture we took one autumn day long ago from a boat on Lake Martin. Right now, it’s squiggles and blobs of paint. Just getting the background right will be a challenge; I need the colors to show up enough that people can tell they are trees and water, but with vague enough detail that they don’t upstage the main part of the picture, Shadow.

I have done two other portraits of our dogs. One turned out well, and one not so well. Here is the pastel of our dog, Tyra, while she was still alive:

I am proud of that one.

Unfortunately, Mandy’s portrait left a bit to be desired. It reminds me of one of those early American paintings where the subjects have little or no neck. But even though it’s less than perfect, I’m still proud of it. 

The point is, with both portraits, somewhere in the middle, I became discouraged and convinced they would never work out.

Two years ago, I worked on a complicated oil painting of a friend of mine and her grandson. I took pictures week by week until finished. And that was worth doing.

Here is the first picture I took: 

And here it is ten weeks later at the end: 

Writing is very much like that. Right now, I am writing the first draft of a book—and I am convinced it is terrible. It’s disjointed, and I move from one scene where a group of people talk to another scene where a group of people talk with little else happening. I’m not sure I’ll be able to pull the plot out to the point where it supports a true novel length work. And probably, even when I pen the words “The End,” I’ll still feel that way. After the first draft, I’ll have at least three rounds of rewriting and editing the book before I can say, “I’m done and  proud of this.”  But looking at my pictures from art class reminds me that if I continue to work on my book, I’ll wind up with something I can be proud of, even if it’s not perfect. That’s how I’ll survive the muddle in the middle.


So here’s to perseverance and patience and plodding step-by-step through a process. It’s worth it.

What inspires you to keep going when you hit a point with a project where you become discouraged?