Tag: creativity

The Room That Knew What I Knew

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

I found an old Toastmasters competition video of myself the other night. Watching old video of myself is its own small torture — you’re looking at a former version, and you can see everything he doesn’t know yet. It’s like watching a younger sibling do the thing. But I’ll say it plainly: it was a good speech. I was proud of it then and I’m proud of it now.

The speech was about my time writing for the college paper. I’d been assigned to cover a speaker one night, and I had the audacity to bring a date and cut out early, before the man even took the stage. The next day I told my professor there wasn’t a story there. She looked at me like I was an idiot — which I was — because the man I hadn’t stayed to hear was a rescue worker from the Oklahoma City bombing. So I went and found him. I learned his story. And somewhere in there I realized he was telling a very good story with his life, and I wasn’t telling much of one at all.

I knew that speech was special because I could feel the room respond when I gave it. And still I ran it, over and over, in front of people who knew the material as well as I did.

That’s the part that seems strange from the outside. I wasn’t in that room to learn what makes a speech work. I could have recited the criteria — vocal variety, gesture, stage use, the scoring rubric, all of it. Everyone in that room could have. And that’s exactly why it worked. There’s a wide gap between knowing the academics of a thing and putting them into practice while you’re standing up there, and nobody can see across that gap from the inside.

Because here’s what a blind spot actually is. It isn’t ignorance. It’s what happens when you’ve rehearsed something so many times it’s dropped into muscle memory — and the very repetition that makes it effortless is what makes the flaw invisible. You’ve done it a hundred times. It feels right. It has to be right. Then somebody who’s watched a thousand speeches tells you you’re repeating a word, or your gesture is overplayed and pulling attention off the line it’s supposed to carry, and you realize you’ve been doing it every single run and you never once saw it. The room wasn’t teaching me anything I didn’t know. The room was seeing me.

I made the district finals with that speech. I don’t believe I get there without those people — not without the corrections, not without the energy they gave me, not without being sanded down enough times to be genuinely polished instead of merely talented. I’ve competed since. I’ve never gotten that far again, and I know exactly why: I’ve never worked that hard again.

But the room isn’t magic, and I want to be honest about that, because I’ve been on the other end of it too. A different competition, a loss I didn’t think I deserved, and a man I’d never met walked up as I came off the stage and asked if he could give me feedback. I wanted to punch him. Not because he was wrong — I don’t even remember if he was wrong. Because he cared more about the method than about me. He wanted to stand on his knowledge for a second. That’s not sharpening. That’s the difference between a supportive community and a religion, and the feedback is identical in both. What changes is whether the person is for you.

And there’s one more thing, which I only saw watching that old video back.

The speech made it about me. I was so busy connecting his story to my own that I never finished it through his eyes — and it’s less powerful for it. It’s a smaller speech than it should have been, and the man deserved better than to be the setup for my lesson.

Nobody in that room ever told me. They couldn’t. Not because they weren’t good enough, but because I gave them a speech I’d already decided was mine, and they helped me deliver the speech I brought them. The room can only sharpen the blade you hand it.

Introducing Myself

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 5 Day 4

Before I can write a character, I have to introduce myself to them. That sounds strange for people I invented, but it’s the truest way I know to describe it. I have to spend time — not just in the story I want to tell, but in the world they live in — until they stop being pieces I move around and become someone I actually know.

With Phase Defiant, the one I spent the most time with was Tiffany. She’s fourteen. I am not, and never have been, a fourteen-year-old girl. (My wife has, which helped more than she’ll ever get credit for.) So I had to sit with what it would actually feel like to be that age and suddenly have a power you never asked for, while you’re still learning to manage your own emotions. Terrifying. And then the harder part — getting her to find the courage to make the choices the story needed from her. You can’t rush a person to that. You have to know her first.

Early on I wanted my characters to be perfect. Strong, capable, sweeping in to overcome evil, no flaws anywhere. A perfect character, it turns out, can’t tell a story. There’s nothing to watch. You need to see someone face adversity, take the setback, come up short and keep going — and none of that is possible if they were invincible to begin with. So I look for the flaws as carefully as the strengths now, because the two together are what tell me how far I can push a person, and where they’ll break, and where they’ll hold.

And they surprise you. In Phase Defiant, Jennifer started as a minor character — someone in the background at the Overwatch facility, barely a name. But the more time I spent with her, the more I understood she couldn’t stay minor. She ended up a hinge the whole story turns on. I didn’t plan that. I just spent enough time with her to hear who she actually was.

People call that “the characters taking over,” like it’s magic. I don’t think it’s magic. I think it’s what happens when you’ve spent so long inside someone’s head that you can brainstorm from their point of view instead of your own. You’re not being visited. You’ve just finally learned them well enough to stop guessing.

But knowing them that well cuts both ways, and this is the part I didn’t see coming. When you truly know a character, there are stretches of the story where you love them — and the work still requires you to send them somewhere hard. Somewhere they’ll suffer, or fail, or turn into someone you don’t like for a while. If they were strangers, that would be easy. They’re not. I’ve come to care about these people, and then I have to be the one who puts them through the worst of it.

I do it because I can see who they might become. The hard road is the only one that gets them there.

Phase Defiant is available on Amazon.

Twenty-Two

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

I’ve sold twenty-two copies of my first novel.

I’m going to sit with that number for a second, because it means two things at once.

First — I wrote a book. A real book. A story I’m genuinely proud of. It has four five-star reviews on Amazon from people who aren’t just being nice. One of them is a stranger who picked it up because a friend recommended it. He put everything else down to finish it. He’s waiting for book two.

Twenty-two people have read something I created, and the ones who’ve talked to me about it say it’s good. Not polite good. Real good.

That feels like something.

Second — twenty-two is not enough. Not because I need validation, but because I know this book could reach people if they could find it. And right now, they can’t. Because I have no idea how to make that happen.

I spent tonight doing research. Honest, unglamorous research into what it actually takes to get a self-published novel in front of readers on Amazon. And here’s what I learned: I don’t know anything about this part of the process.

I know how to write a book. I don’t know how to sell one. Getting the algorithm to show it to people, building the kind of social proof that makes a stranger willing to take a chance on an author they’ve never heard of — I’m standing at the edge of what I know. And there’s nothing out here but questions I haven’t answered yet.

That’s an uncomfortable place to be. Especially after eighty-five days of building systems and shipping work and feeling like the momentum is real. Because the momentum is real. I know where I’m going. I just don’t have the skill yet to get the book there with me. And the only way to learn it is the same way I’ve learned everything else this year. Read. Ask questions. Build a system. Execute. Adjust.

I didn’t know how to write a novel until I wrote one. I didn’t know how to build a daily habit system until I built one. I don’t know how to market a book yet. But I will.

Twenty-two copies. Four five-star reviews. One stranger who couldn’t put it down.

That’s not a failure. That’s a foundation.

P.S. If you want to check it out: https://a.co/d/06d0FLNf

Tend the Yard

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 68 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge

I spent over six hours outside today. Not sunbathing. Working.

We hauled tree clippings to the dump. I mowed the entire yard. We hung gates on my wife’s garden. And by the time I came inside, I was sunburned, sore, and more satisfied than I’ve been in a while.

Which is funny, because in my younger years, I absolutely hated yard work.

We moved into this house in June of 2025. We’re the second owners — the previous owner had it for 23 years. She had fruit trees planted, landscaping installed, and a home that was well-loved for a long time. But somewhere in the last several years, things fell into disrepair. She moved on, and the yard didn’t move with her.

When we got here, we found trees that were overgrown. Vines climbing up into the branches. Wire supports from when the trees were young — still wrapped around the base, now growing into the bark because nobody ever removed them. Beautiful, healthy trees being quietly damaged by neglect.

The grass had weeds woven through it. The landscaping needed major remediation. The bones were good, but the care had stopped.

Sound familiar?

My wife — who is a far more skilled gardener than I will ever be — went to work on those trees. She pruned them back hard. Cut away the dead wood. Removed the vines. Freed the trunks from the wire that was choking them. Some of those trees look like they’ve had major surgery.

They may not be as fruitful this year. But they’ll be healthy. And in the years to come, they’ll produce more than they ever did when they were overgrown and neglected.

Last year, before any of this work was done, we picked over 75 pounds of apples off just two of our nine apple trees. Trees that hadn’t been tended to in years. Imagine what happens now that we’ve actually taken care of them.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this today while I was mowing.

Because this yard is my life.

For twenty years, I had good bones. I had talent. I had ideas. I had desire. But things had fallen into disrepair. Habits I should have been tending to were overgrown. Wires I should have removed years ago — old ways of thinking, old excuses, old patterns — were growing into the bark. I was still producing some fruit, but nowhere near what was possible if someone had just taken the time to prune.

That’s what the last 68 days have been. Pruning.

Cutting away the things that don’t need to be there. Making sure the state of my life is in order. Organizing every day so that the conditions are right for growth. Trimming back activities that weren’t producing anything so the ones that matter can thrive.

It’s not glamorous work. It’s not the kind of thing that makes a good Instagram post. But it’s the work that makes everything else possible.

I started reading Todd Henry’s Die Empty today while I was mowing. And the title — which sounds morbid if you don’t know the context — is actually one of the most inspiring ideas I’ve encountered.

Henry’s argument is simple: as a creative person, you want to have been so creative, so often, that when your time finally comes, there’s nothing left inside that didn’t get out. You tended the garden. You grew the fruit. You pulled the vines. You planted the seeds. And at the end of the season, there’s nothing else that could have been done.

You die empty. Not because you had nothing. Because you gave everything.

That’s exactly what I’m aiming for. Not just through this challenge, but through the way I choose to live.

I know I was put here to do important things. To take care of people. To love people. To inspire people. To be more and do more than what might meet the eye.

I want to be a good steward of what I’ve been given. I want to make my home beautiful. I want to make my property beautiful. I want to provide for my family. I want to be generous with others. I want to be creative enough that all the things I’ve been put here to do actually get done.

I want to tend the yard — the literal one and the metaphorical one — so that when the season is over, the harvest speaks for itself.

I want to die empty. Because I offered myself as a living sacrifice, one that was pleasing to God in the end.

Day 68 Scorecard:

✅ Bible study and prayer
✅ Exercise (6 hours of yard work)
✅ Reading (Die Empty — Todd Henry + Keep Going — Austin Kleon)
✅ Calories tracked
✅ Water (100 oz)
✅ Gratitude
✅ BiblePictures365
✅ Creative hour

740Challenge #DieEmpty #ToddHenry #TendTheYard #Transformation #LivingProof #DayByDay #Stewardship #PruneToGrow #LifeOnPurpose

I Can Do More Than I Imagined: Day 35 and Discovering Your Capacity

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 35 of the 7-40 Challenge
Wednesday, February 4, 2026

One of the most interesting things about this round of the challenge is I’ve been able to think outside of the box more than in almost any time past.

I put lofty goals in front of myself: revising my book while working on physical fitness and getting social media going at the same time.

Here’s what I’m finding 35 days in: So much more is possible than I ever knew before.

I’m able to do more than I imagined. That’s delightful and frustrating all at the same time—because it means I’m making progress now, but it raises the question of all that time before.

But I’m not going there. Here’s what I’m learning instead.

The Evidence

This realization has been gradual. Ninety-seven chapters revised in less than a month. Daily blog posts by leveraging voice-to-text. The Light Bearer outlined after sitting dormant for five years.

I’ve never successfully finished a book before. I not only finished one over Christmas, but revised it and started planning the next one.

That’s making me feel like I can do far more than I imagined.

The Temptation

If I can do all this NOW, why didn’t I do it BEFORE?

It’s tempting to look back at twenty years of “someday I’ll…” notes and think about wasted time.

But I’m not going there. The most honest thing I can say is this: Until now, I was not prepared to do any of this.

I wanted to. I thought about it. But my desire for action was not there.

What Changed

It was finally time. I had my put up or shut up moment. And I don’t really like shutting up.

So I put up. Seven daily habits. Forty days. 2026 would be different.

And 35 days in, I’m discovering: Capacity expands when preparation meets the right tools at the right time.

Voice-to-text turns 10-minute rambles into drafts. AI creates 100+ Bible images with 30,000+ views. OpusClip distributes one video across platforms. The 7-40 structure removes decision fatigue.

Eighteen years in data management taught me systems. One hundred Toastmaster presentations taught me storytelling. Two cancer battles taught me not to waste time. Twenty-seven years of marriage taught me perseverance.

All of it together = discovering I can do far more than I imagined.

What This Means

If you’re thinking, “I wish I could do more,” here’s what I’ve learned: You probably can.

Not because you’ll gain superpowers. But because when you get clear on what you want, build the right structure, leverage your tools, and show up consistently—you discover capacity you didn’t know you had.

I didn’t know I could revise 97 chapters in a month. Write 35 consecutive blog posts. Plan a second novel before publishing the first. Generate 30,000+ views on Bible content. (More on this a different time.)

But I can. And I am.

Not because I’m special. Because I’m finally prepared, I have the right tools, and it’s finally time.

The Discovery

You can do more than you think. Once you’re ready.

You know you’re ready when you stop thinking about it and start doing it. When you have your put up or shut up moment. When you realize you don’t like shutting up.

That’s when capacity expands. That’s when you discover what’s actually possible.

Five more days until Round 1 is complete. And I’m just getting started.

Day 35: Complete ✓

All seven habits executed. Discovering capacity in real time.

Round 1 Progress: 35/40 days (87.5%)

Five more days until Assessment Week.

See you tomorrow for Day 36.