Do You Have the Courage to Write Badly?

Letting Bad Ideas Lead You Back to Good Work

Dear friends,

Thank you for all the support with the release of “Please Let Me Know” last week - the project is on track, and next week I will start setting up the release of track 4. Suddenly, the months of 2025 are already ticking by!

This week’s newsletter was inspired by a story about how Steve Martin wrote a Grammy-winning album after overcoming the “need” to write good songs. It’s propelled a new levity in my creative approach, and is helping me as I try to ritualise my approach to songwriting.

With being so busy with the project, the podcast kept getting pushed aside. However, I had some good news about it, which I’ve put at the bottom of the newsletter, and it gave me the nudge I needed to get back on track. It reminded me that part of the path with all our endeavours is that we get off track. Sometimes the catalyst comes from the outside, and often it must be internal. Here’s a gentle note to say that if you’re off track — no matter.

It’s Spring and a time of renewal.

Time to take a deep breath, forgive yourself and play a new hand at the game.

Jim

I knew that all the hundred thousand pieces of life's game were in my pocket. A glimpse of its meaning had stirred my reason and I was determined to play a new hand at the game.”
—Hermann Hesse

Do You Have the Courage to Write Badly?

Many of us have a complex relationship with what we’d most like to do with our lives.

One of the pain points I see is how often we get stuck between extremes.

We dream, and in those crystalline moments, when the vision feels utterly transparent, it’s as though we have unbridled access to it. Briefly, it seems easy.

Then reality assaults.

One moment, your whole life lies beautifully mapped out before you—you won’t just follow the path; but live it too.

And the next, there is nothing.

No space whatsoever for that pursuit.

Damn, I’m not even doing it enough to call it a hobby…

We are pulverised by all-or-nothing thinking. And the brute reality is, that often leaves you holding onto nothing.

Rediscovering the Song

When I set out last year to discover if I had any songs left in me, it was partly about addressing this extremity.

Music had found a place of peace in my life, and for many years there was a healthy balance between living, work and creative calling.

But at some point, I noticed—song was diminishing.

It didn’t feel like a choice; rather, it felt like a growing absence.

My playing began to recede, and as it did, a shadow crept over me. It wasn’t merely that I was losing my skills, but an emotional distance began to widen too. Is that what adulthood is, I wondered—to grow accustomed to the gulf inside us?

When I resolved to pursue songwriting again—to confront this question—I quickly remembered why I'd become an accomplice in my own diminishing:

God, this is hard!

Picking something back up is hard.

It's easy to carry the weight of what might have been had you never set it aside in the first place.

You can be shadowed by loss, and confronting that shadow might make you turn right back around at the starting line.

It’s galling—to find yourself again at a starting line you thought you'd passed long ago.

I don’t know if you relate, but these are some of the silent internal battles some of us wage.

Bringing Back Levity

Here's what I've realised:

We go too damn hard on ourselves.

If that's true, how do we counteract it?

One way is to bring back levity.

Easier said than done when you deeply care—or when you start rearranging your life and making sacrifices for that thing.

I had a breakthrough recently, inspired by a story in Billy Oppenheimer’s newsletter:

When Steve Martin retired from comedy, he pivoted to music but found himself creatively blocked. Nothing he wrote matched the quality of his comedy. Then he discovered a book called “The Stuffed Owl”, a collection of intentionally bad poetry. Allowing himself to intentionally write badly freed something in him—and his album The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo went on to win a Grammy.

Ah, what wonderful freedom this story brought me!

I realised I was putting immense pressure on myself to write good stuff. Of course, we want our outcomes to be—eventually—good.

But the paradox is that to produce the good, you have to audition everything in your spirit.

Do you have the courage to fudge, fuck-up, and fumble?

Is your identity so fragile that you can't bear doing something badly, even privately?

You crash against your own seriousness, and from the wreckage, you rediscover your levity.

Look, if you’re avoiding something you really want to do, unburden yourself from the idea that it must be good!

Nothing obstructs the creative process more. Why? Because good stuff arises from a spirit of play.

It doesn’t mean that it must—or will—be easy.

But it will open up a realm of arcane experimentation.

Three Breakthroughs for Creative Freedom

Reading about Martin’s courage inspired me in three ways:

First, I realised I'd only been songwriting when I felt inspired. That’s fine if that’s your choice—it keeps you fresh. But I wanted to explore deeper, to see what might be discovered with renewed commitment. I'd known it for a while but had skirted around it.

The shadow?

What if I pursue it and find nothing good?

As Spring breaks out, I want something within me to break out too: joyful, careless experimentation. It doesn't need to be good. It doesn't need to match what I’ve done before. It doesn’t have to be anything at all. No goal. I just want to see what's there—and if it exists, I trust it'll find its way out.

Second, I’ve begun playful ritualisation with my songwriting. For the first time in ages, I’m making it a habit. Each morning, I try to write something bad. Of course, it's lovely if it's "good," but it’s not about these absurdly judgmental parameters we place on ourselves. It's about opening to the process and seeing what unfolds. Funnily enough, it's already reshaping my writing—and who knows, maybe this post represents the seed of something. Let’s see!

Third, is embracing the spirit of Kaizen: improving through the smallest incremental changes.

Can I ask the smallest question?
Can I take the smallest step?
Can I do something slightly different from yesterday?
What's a method I haven't explored?
How did this person write?
What ritual led to this song, and what can I learn from it?

Practising Love and Forgiveness

When I look at the world, one overlooked reality is how hard we are on ourselves—and each other.

To love something—or someone—is to make mistakes. Things are intrinsically, majestically messy. But if love connects to our imperfection, our endless capacity for mistakes, then love is also about forgiveness. Forgiveness is the practice of love—or perhaps it’s the other way around.

You don’t need to do something full-time for it to be worthwhile.

But if you’re avoiding that thing that quickens your pulse, you might need courage:

The courage to be bad.
The courage to return.
The courage to forgive the time you've lost—or even to recognise that loss is just an illusion anyway.

We engage in these things because they express our love—our way of interacting with the grand drama of life, offering our potential as we do so.

Throwing out judgments of good and bad might be a great place to start.

As for me, I’m jacked on coffee, and I’m off to write something bad before tackling the day's tasks.

With love dear friends,
Jim

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PODCAST NOTE

This was a nice motivator for the podcast. One curious thing about creative work is how easily we get disheartened when results aren’t immediate—or when our efforts seem lost in the tsunami of content.

Equally, I do believe that if you put love—or as much as you can, relative to your time and energy—into what you do, then it will find its way.

I'm usually quite good at internal motivation, but this was definitely a welcome nudge from the outside.

If you have a moment to listen to this week’s podcast, please let me know your thoughts on the background music. I originally aimed for a quick, simple recording, but the damn tram outside my studio had other ideas! I ended up finding this music on Epidemic Sound and liked the vibe. I'd love to know which approach you prefer:

• Voice Only

• My usual bigger production style

• Easy background music like this episode

Your feedback is much appreciated.