Last minute ideas

That moment when inspiration strikes.
You can’t control that.
Sometimes it strikes last minute.

When it strikes, everything immediately becomes so obvious. You’re mad at yourself that you didn’t see it before. It will make your piece so much better.

But it also means stress. You’ll have to re-structure it a bit, re-work parts of it and build the new aspects. There’s not going to be much time for errors. You can’t practice a lot. It has to be perfect from the start. It’s going to be stressful.

But it’s going to be worth it.

Or is it?

Because it might break an otherwise fine piece.

It might be the kind of idea that sounds great today but not so great anymore, tomorrow. Only that this time, there was no tomorrow because it had been last minute.

Or maybe the only reason that you allowed the idea to enter your mind was fear. The fear that somehow you needed to deliver even more when actually, you didn’t.

Maybe you didn’t trust the process and felt that you needed to try harder and even mediocre ideas had the chance of masquerading as great ideas.

Last minute ideas sometimes do work and turn a good piece into a great one. It feels awesome when that happens.

But just as often, last minute ideas are not worth the hassle. They don’t make the piece better. They cause stress. And maybe they even break it.

I’ve found it a better practice to establish a process, trust in it to lead you to great results, and don’t let yourself be distracted by last minute fears and hassle.

If it’s not perfect, I’ll refine the process next time.

(And, of course, learn to know when to make exceptions to that rule.)