When I took on my latest book project more than eight months ago I took the first steps on a familiar journey of creation. It's an arc that traverses through every emotion and level of stoke possible – with some good healthy doses of despair and horror thrown in.
Luckily, it starts in a roar of excitement. Everything is awesome and this project is going to break new ground. Ambition has no limit and you bite off great hunks of it thriving in the sea of ideas and possibilities. This part is incredible. It's why projects start, because if the next stage came first not many would be embarked upon.
That next stage is the realisation of the scope of the project and how your grand ambitions at the start have now committed you to going deep. Maybe too deep? It's exhilirating and frightening at the same time. Now it feels like work. But it's about to get worse.
This phase is immediately followed by a deadline that starts to pinch time, leap forward, rear up ominously. It's about now you feel the full pressure of creation. It's a heavy, dreary old beast that chips away at your self-belief. The gloss is gone, this is the graft. Hard graft. Distilling months of work and research into just 14 photos and 1000 words. That's about where I am right now.
Somewhere in that haze of pressure the magic happens. Bit-by-bit the project comes to life and offers glimpses of what will soon be complete. The sanity slowly returns as something good brews.
See you at the beach ... Derek
PS Going to the Piha Pro? Here's our handy guide to spectating the Piha Pro. And if you haven't already checked it out we have released our full story on New Zealand's Olympic hope – Billy Stairmand, over on New Zealand Surf Journal.
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