Three Seconds, by Jonas David

‘Three Seconds’ started as a quick post for my personal blog. At the time I was trying to write a little story or scene every few days, just about whatever came into my head. I had this thought about people trapped in a void and the things they might argue about over the aeons.

As I wrote, though, they became more than human, and came to represent certain parts of our own behavior: creation, destruction and restraint.

Tessa is the passion for creation that we all have, the driving desire to imagine, develop and explore new ideas. She is creation with abandon the part of us all that when considering any project wants to throw caution aside and just do it.

The POV character is the necessary need for destruction--the willingness to let go of old projects that have stagnated, the ability to edit, or kill of a character-- that little part in all of us that sees a beautiful stained glass window and wants to smash it.

To me, Alec represents that part of us all that says 'I can't do it', the self-critical--even self-loathing, sometimes--internal voice that judges everything we do so much more harshly than our peers.

The message as I planned it, was that we should defeat that part of ourselves that holds back, and just create. Whether it be music or writing or cooking or coding, creating--even if you end up creating something broken, or of terrible quality--is always better than sitting around wondering if you are good enough, better than worrying so much about everything being perfect that you never create anything at all.

In my early days of writing this happened to me all too often. I'd come up with an idea, but instead of writing it I'd think 'someone's done this before' or 'I won't be able to do it well enough' or any other number of self-critical things, and instead of even trying, I'd toss the idea aside. Or, in the rare times that I thought the idea was unique enough and that I could do it well, I'd end up focusing so much on every minute detail of everything being figured out beforehand that I'd never start writing.

I think it’s important for any creative person to defeat this part of themselves. Realize that no idea is perfectly unique, and anything you create is going to have flaws, and not everyone is going to like everything you do. Once you can accept these truths and get past them, you’ll find your passion unleashed.

Defeat your own restraint, and your world will explode with universes of creation!

--Jonas David