The next day with Troye was pretty stress free. I made it to Troye's house with no issues. His family came to pick us up from the airport and now I was currently sitting in the comfort of Troye's bed, looking at and listening to Troye's fingers smacking the keyboard on his Mac while he was sitting at his desk, preparing for filming his music videos. I was sitting with my Mac in my lap with an empty page open on Google Drive. I'd been sitting for at least thirty minutes staring at the blank screen. Troye was being extremely considerate of my presence and kept quiet as I was thinking of how to start my book.
I finally decided to break the silence. "Troye?"
"Yeah Connor?"
"I don't know how to start my book, or even what to name it."
"It'll come to you, I promise."
"But when though? I really wanna start but I feel like I'm never going to be able to."
"Just write something." Troye then got up from his desk and sat next to me on the bed, taking my Mac off of my lap and putting it onto his. He looked at me dead in the eye and then turned to the computer screen. Hesitating for a second, he proceeded to type random letters into the blank document. He then turned my computer to face me for me to see what he had typed. "ads woihfd inasds proasdaj" I looked at Troye and laughed. Troye smiled, but he didn't laugh because he was trying to be serious. "Now," Troye began to say, "Make it better." I stared bluntly at the screen. Troye sighed. "Don't think too hard about it." He said. "It's a work in progress." I looked at Troye and lit up. "That's it." I said to him, grabbing my Mac off of his lap. "What?" He asked confusedly. I looked at the random letters that Troye had typed on the screen and began to edit them. Troye watched as I erased the letters.
"a woihfd inasds proasdaj" I kept erasing.
"a wo inasds proasdaj" And erasing.
"a wo in proasdaj" And erasing.
"a wo in pro" And erasing.
Until there was no more to be erased. Now, it was time to add.
"a work in pro" And adding.
"a work in progress" And adding.
I looked at Troye, who was somewhat in awe. "I think I made it a little better." I said to him, grinning. "Yeah," Troye said. "I do too."
That night I sat and wrote,
and wrote,
and wrote,
and wrote.
I didn't care that what I was writing may have been out of order. I let I thoughts flow right out of me. I wrote.
It was three twenty-seven a.m., so I ended the night by writing the following:
When I get an idea, I roll with it, whatever the circumstances. I become obsessed with the thought, and it seeps into my every pore. I find it hard to put into words, but I get a kind of innovative high when I take a cool photo, film a particularly artistic video, or even just think of an inspirational idiom. I can't get enough of the act of creation. That visceral feeling pushes me forward.
My best friend, Troye, once told me, "If you wanna make cool shit, you gotta make cool shit," and it's engraved in my mind.
My creative process starts with an idea. I can't tell you for certain where it comes from. Ideas come to me in the shower, on airplanes, while I'm sitting in a restaurant, or lying in bed awake at 3:00 a.m., when my mind just can't seem to shut off. If it won't leave me alone, I begin expanding on it with notes. I think it all the way through, adding bullet points and examples. Then I just do it.
— Connor Franta, A Work in Progress, page 98
