The Way Rivers Flow

“Rivers don’t work like that!”

Since childhood, I’ve enjoyed drawing maps of all kinds: real places, fictitious places, even a combination of both. Globes and maps are fascinating to me, and I love poring over the details presented differently from map to map.

In the past few years, I’ve joined a handful of online communities centered around cartography. A phrase (and a running joke) common in each group is: “Rivers don’t work like that!”

It’s typically said in response to an amateur cartographer presenting one of their first maps, in which commonly many of their rivers don’t follow many of the natural patterns. The drawn rivers will divide (bifurcate) many times, or they will flow from one coast to another, or they will ignore gravity and seem to flow uphill. Sometimes all three are on the same map.

This always leads to a big debate (shocking on the internet, I know) about the merits of the map in question: ways in which the cartographer can improve, whether or not the oddities can or need to be explained in the fiction (magic is always the cop-out), and some people suggest referencing existing maps both real and fictitious.

Personally, I prefer to use common natural formations in my maps, because I believe it adds a stronger sense of realism and believability. But I digress.

This entry isn’t REALLY about rivers.

At the beginning of this month, and as has been my plan for the past several months, I have intended to dedicate August 2023 to completing a multimedia work that has been in my mind for the past six or seven years. I decided to finally make the time to work on it, to push my creative horizons and crank out this piece I’ve been wanting to create for so long.

Admittedly, I started working on portions of it towards the end of July. Progress was good, and I was able to complete a few smaller sections of the work. Even better, I was able to draw up a unifying architecture for the work, as a way to keep every part in-check so that it would all be one unified work once completed.

So that’s good.

Then August began, and I kept at it. For the first week.

I had an exhilarating fervor of creating for a couple of days. And then… I became stuck.

The momentum I had slipped out of my grasp. Thankfully, not in a frustrating way - more like smoke trailing off into the wind. I’ll give myself grace and I’ll find my footing once again over the next few days, I thought to myself.

And so I eased off of the gas pedal. I gave myself breathing room to allow that creative energy to return, so I can continue my work.

After a few days, my energy for this multimedia piece had not returned. In the past, I would have been frustrated and I would have tried to proverbially force myself through a brick wall - the creative block. But I’d like to think that I’m wiser now. I did not force myself to continue.

The river cannot flow uphill.

To my surprise, the creative vigor turned up for a completely different project - one that I had not anticipated working on until at least this winter, if not next year or later.

In the past 10 days or so, I’ve cemented the foundation of this other work. Whereas before it was nebulous and without aim, it now has a declarable direction - the trajectory I’ve been wanting for it but hadn’t been able to nail down until this month.

(As an aside: I’m intentionally not giving specifics about this project. While I’ve made significant progress on it, details are not ready to be shared nor are they the focus of this blog entry.)

The lesson I’m learning is that sometimes you have to step away from something when it isn’t working out. If you step away, there is always a chance of meeting a greater opportunity. If you don’t step away, that chance is next to zero.

It’s a lesson in taking the path of least resistance.

Rivers flow where there is the least resistance. Sometimes a river flows down a hillside; sometimes through a mountain range, other times over a cliff, or even meandering through the plains. In each instance, the resistance is different from river to river, but they all flow downward.

(Note that there’s a difference between taking the path of least resistance and being lazy. Don’t be lazy.)

If, this month, I had continued to try making progress on my multimedia piece, I would not have made the progress I have on the other project. I would have been trying to flow uphill.

And rivers don’t work like that.