What do you think?
Rate this book
Start Ugly: The Unexpected Path to Everyday Creativity
The poet Goethe is credited as saying, "What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it, and the work will be completed!"
If only it were that easy.
In any creative effort, the beginning is the hard part, filled with fears and procrastinations, and---often most of all-the paralyzing desire to get it right on the first try (which almost never happens). Creativity is evolutionary; it begins with bad ideas and crappy first efforts and the moment we embrace this idea, not eschewing the ugly beginnings but mining them for possibilities, our everyday creativity flourishes.
Start Ugly is a celebration of the messy creative process and a call to face the obstacles of that process with mindfulness and humanity. This is a book for anyone who has ever wished they were "more creative." It's a plea to stop looking for the muses and inspiration before you do your best work. Equal parts needed encouragement to dream big and practical advice for getting your hands dirty, START UGLY is a soulful, at times irreverent, reminder that creativity is more the stuff of hard work and courage than it is the stuff of magic. And if there is magic at all to be found, it's in starting.
If only it were that easy.
In any creative effort, the beginning is the hard part, filled with fears and procrastinations, and---often most of all-the paralyzing desire to get it right on the first try (which almost never happens). Creativity is evolutionary; it begins with bad ideas and crappy first efforts and the moment we embrace this idea, not eschewing the ugly beginnings but mining them for possibilities, our everyday creativity flourishes.
Start Ugly is a celebration of the messy creative process and a call to face the obstacles of that process with mindfulness and humanity. This is a book for anyone who has ever wished they were "more creative." It's a plea to stop looking for the muses and inspiration before you do your best work. Equal parts needed encouragement to dream big and practical advice for getting your hands dirty, START UGLY is a soulful, at times irreverent, reminder that creativity is more the stuff of hard work and courage than it is the stuff of magic. And if there is magic at all to be found, it's in starting.
160 pages, Paperback
Published July 17, 2020
40 people are currently reading
328 people want to read
About the author
David duChemin
87 books166 followersDavid duChemin is a world & humanitarian photographer, best-selling author, and international workshop leader.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 23, 2020
There's nothing much new in this book and that's OK.
What there is, is a beautiful curation of many of the best ideas we already know to be true about the creative process and how to get started. All in one place.
And unlike other books that stretch to 300+ pages, the author cleverly errs on the side of brevity and clarity. So there's a powerful vignette every couple of pages.
Highly recommended for anyone stuck. Whether your a writer, an artist, an entrepreneur or a scientist. Everyone who wants more will get something from the terrific little book.
What there is, is a beautiful curation of many of the best ideas we already know to be true about the creative process and how to get started. All in one place.
And unlike other books that stretch to 300+ pages, the author cleverly errs on the side of brevity and clarity. So there's a powerful vignette every couple of pages.
Highly recommended for anyone stuck. Whether your a writer, an artist, an entrepreneur or a scientist. Everyone who wants more will get something from the terrific little book.
February 13, 2025
A really helpful book about creativity which tells you there's no need to wait for inspiration from muses and other inspiring sources. You just need to start even bad, even ugly, even imperfect, the most important thing is "just start" right now.
September 15, 2024
Good little book. People who can utilize vertical relationships in order to get things done will benefit from reading the advice from this book (lists, check boxes, timeboxing, accountability buddies, etc). A bit of over reliance on the concept of Flow to support some of the ideas presented. Overall, an easy recommendation for someone looking to help foster a creativity-centric lifestyle as it covers a lot of the basics while providing some unique takes on things --which can add interesting new perspectives on aspects of the lifestyle.
July 20, 2025
I usually start my reviews with one of my favorite quotes from the book. I like letting the prose speak for itself. It’s also just easier to start every review the same way. Because beginning anything is hard—especially writing. duChemin agrees.
Start Ugly focuses heavily on the “mindset/perspective shift” aspect of writing and less so on the practical. duChemin states this outright in the very last chapter of the book, though I think it would be better placed in the first chapter just to be crystal clear:
“This book was never meant to be a recipe or template to wildly increase your productivity or help more consistently you tap into the will of the muses. Mostly I wrote it to help you understand the different facets of one principle that helps me every day to make the things I make and to overcome the most immediate of the many obstacles that threaten our work.”
That principle is, as the title states, to start ugly.
For those of us who have trouble turning off the editor part of our brains while we’re still writing the first draft, this is a difficult thing to do. After finishing this book, I challenged myself to write an ugly first draft of this book review. I accomplished that. Writing an ugly draft wasn’t hard, of course. But leaving the draft be for a day or two without agonizing over it was. Maybe it’s because I’m coming fresh off of four years of college writing, where time constraints, competing priorities, and procrastination mean that, sometimes, our first draft (with a few tweaks) may end up being the paper we turn in for a final grade. So it better be decent.
It’s difficult to undo that cycle. It sets you up to see writing as a linear process rather than a cylindrical, reiterative process that needs room to grow and evolve without judgement. That last part is crucial: without judgement. That’s the mindset shift duChemin urges us to make:
“Don’t wait to be certain. Don’t wait until you’ve got it all figured out before you begin. Writers don’t think and then write; we write in order to think. You can’t do that unless you’re willing to put some words on the page, take many of them off, and move them around. And you can’t do that unless you’re willing to start, and for that start to be ugly. It is the same for everyone who makes anything.”
Writing is also work and routine. That’s the second major mindset shift duChemin presents. It reminded me a lot of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and surely enough, duChemin directly quotes Pressfield in this book: “[The muse] only shows up when you do; she has to find you working. Everything in the creative life, all of it, depends on us.” Great minds think alike.
What both duChemin and Pressfield stress is that creativity—something many writers fear they don’t possess or don’t possess enough of—is not some mystical gift bestowed upon the chosen few. Creativity is something we all already have because it boils down to the ability to solve problems. That’s it. Even writing a book review is a problem to solve.
And because creativity is something you do, not something you have, that makes it an action, not a character trait. And that means it is something within our control:
“When creativity stops being a work ethic, it gets a lot harder. Harder to understand, harder to talk about. Harder to do. Combine that with all this talk about inspiration (not something we do) and muses (not something we control), and it’s no wonder we often feel like this is all just completely out of our hands when the opposite is true.”
Reading Start Ugly gave me back a sense of agency, just like reading The War of Art did. That’s why I can pick up book after book on writing, even though many of them repeat the same principles. I think of it as a spiritual vitamin that helps keep my expectations reasonable and replenishes my sense of motivation. And if so many authors keep repeating the same thing, there’s probably something to it:
"The ugly is an indication of the challenge; it’s a sign that what you’re embarking on is hard enough to tease out the best of you and make you better. The ugly is a promise of the potential of flow."
The book isn’t all theoretical; there’s some practical stuff in here, too. duChemin explores how to create a writing ritual, how to implement constraints to narrow your focus, how to deal with boredom and burnout, and how to use an “ugly notebook” to help get the ideas flowing.
In my opinion, it’s well worth the read. The premise is straightforward enough, but it’s duChemin’s anecdotes and reflections that flesh it all out. And in a world where it is so easy to compare ourselves to others, to compare our first drafts to someone else’s finished product, it’s important to remind ourselves that starting ugly isn’t a failure; it’s a necessity.
Start Ugly focuses heavily on the “mindset/perspective shift” aspect of writing and less so on the practical. duChemin states this outright in the very last chapter of the book, though I think it would be better placed in the first chapter just to be crystal clear:
“This book was never meant to be a recipe or template to wildly increase your productivity or help more consistently you tap into the will of the muses. Mostly I wrote it to help you understand the different facets of one principle that helps me every day to make the things I make and to overcome the most immediate of the many obstacles that threaten our work.”
That principle is, as the title states, to start ugly.
For those of us who have trouble turning off the editor part of our brains while we’re still writing the first draft, this is a difficult thing to do. After finishing this book, I challenged myself to write an ugly first draft of this book review. I accomplished that. Writing an ugly draft wasn’t hard, of course. But leaving the draft be for a day or two without agonizing over it was. Maybe it’s because I’m coming fresh off of four years of college writing, where time constraints, competing priorities, and procrastination mean that, sometimes, our first draft (with a few tweaks) may end up being the paper we turn in for a final grade. So it better be decent.
It’s difficult to undo that cycle. It sets you up to see writing as a linear process rather than a cylindrical, reiterative process that needs room to grow and evolve without judgement. That last part is crucial: without judgement. That’s the mindset shift duChemin urges us to make:
“Don’t wait to be certain. Don’t wait until you’ve got it all figured out before you begin. Writers don’t think and then write; we write in order to think. You can’t do that unless you’re willing to put some words on the page, take many of them off, and move them around. And you can’t do that unless you’re willing to start, and for that start to be ugly. It is the same for everyone who makes anything.”
Writing is also work and routine. That’s the second major mindset shift duChemin presents. It reminded me a lot of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and surely enough, duChemin directly quotes Pressfield in this book: “[The muse] only shows up when you do; she has to find you working. Everything in the creative life, all of it, depends on us.” Great minds think alike.
What both duChemin and Pressfield stress is that creativity—something many writers fear they don’t possess or don’t possess enough of—is not some mystical gift bestowed upon the chosen few. Creativity is something we all already have because it boils down to the ability to solve problems. That’s it. Even writing a book review is a problem to solve.
And because creativity is something you do, not something you have, that makes it an action, not a character trait. And that means it is something within our control:
“When creativity stops being a work ethic, it gets a lot harder. Harder to understand, harder to talk about. Harder to do. Combine that with all this talk about inspiration (not something we do) and muses (not something we control), and it’s no wonder we often feel like this is all just completely out of our hands when the opposite is true.”
Reading Start Ugly gave me back a sense of agency, just like reading The War of Art did. That’s why I can pick up book after book on writing, even though many of them repeat the same principles. I think of it as a spiritual vitamin that helps keep my expectations reasonable and replenishes my sense of motivation. And if so many authors keep repeating the same thing, there’s probably something to it:
"The ugly is an indication of the challenge; it’s a sign that what you’re embarking on is hard enough to tease out the best of you and make you better. The ugly is a promise of the potential of flow."
The book isn’t all theoretical; there’s some practical stuff in here, too. duChemin explores how to create a writing ritual, how to implement constraints to narrow your focus, how to deal with boredom and burnout, and how to use an “ugly notebook” to help get the ideas flowing.
In my opinion, it’s well worth the read. The premise is straightforward enough, but it’s duChemin’s anecdotes and reflections that flesh it all out. And in a world where it is so easy to compare ourselves to others, to compare our first drafts to someone else’s finished product, it’s important to remind ourselves that starting ugly isn’t a failure; it’s a necessity.
September 12, 2022
I love David DuChemin's books. He simplifies what is simple but feels complicated. This book is about getting out of your own way and just getting started. (in a nutshell!). I enjoyed it and found inspiration in his words.
September 20, 2021
Great actionable tips for getting creative work done.
December 28, 2024
A simple principle so why is it so hard to just start something?
Interesting book.
Interesting book.
March 3, 2025
It is time to be drunk!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews