What Good Are Your Cracks?

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Some days, I sit down to write and wonder what the hell I’m doing.

The words don’t flow. The structure feels off. My confidence has left the building and is probably sitting at a pub somewhere ordering beer, wings, and nachos without me.

You’d think after years in law enforcement, forensics, and now crime writing, I’d be bulletproof by now—impervious to self-doubt and rejection. But nope. There are days I feel like a cracked pot.

And that, my fellow Kill Zoners, brings me to a story I want to share with you. It’s an old one. A quiet one. But it says everything a writer needs to hear.

The Story of the Cracked Pot

There was an old man who lived in a village in India. Every morning, he would place a long stick across his back, hang a water pot from each end, and walk several miles to the river to get fresh water for his family.

But the two water pots were not the same. One had a series of small cracks in its side, causing it to leak.

The old man would fill both pots at the river, but by the time he got back to his home, the cracked pot would be half empty, the water having leaked out during the walk.

The cracked pot grew increasingly ashamed of its inability to complete the task for which it was made. One day, while the old man filled the two pots at the river, the cracked pot spoke to him.

“I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassed that I cannot fulfill my responsibilities as well as the other pot.”

The old man smiled and replied, “On the walk home today, rather than hanging your head in shame, I want you to look up at the side of the path.”

The cracked pot reluctantly agreed to do as the old man asked. As they left the riverbank and started on the path, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

On his side of the path was a beautiful row of flowers.

“You see,” the old man said, “I’ve always known you had those cracks, so I planted flower seeds along your side of the path. Each day, your cracks helped me water them. And now, I pick these flowers to share their beauty with the entire village.”

We All Leak a Little

That story gets me every time.

Because if you’ve ever tried to create something from nothing, to sit at a keyboard and bring life to characters who don’t exist yet, then you know what it means to question your usefulness. You know what it feels like to compare yourself to someone else’s perfect pot—and wonder why your own words keep leaking out, incomplete, imperfect, maybe even irrelevant.

But what if your cracks are the very thing that make your writing beautiful?

What if the years you spent doubting yourself taught you empathy—and now your characters breathe with it?

What if the rejections, the self-edits, the tough critiques… what if those watered something beside the path you just haven’t noticed yet?

I’m not here to hand you a participation ribbon or pat your head and say, “You’re special.” You already know writing is hard. It takes guts. It takes sitting with discomfort and pushing through.

But I am here to tell you that those imperfections you think are holding you back?

They’re feeding the flowers.

Keep Leaking

Maybe your story structure feels like a mess. Maybe your plot sagged in Act Two and hasn’t recovered. Maybe someone told you you’d never make it—and part of you believed them.

Here’s what I want you to remember.

There is no perfect pot.

Even the bestselling author you admire struggles with the page. Even the literary genius has doubt gnawing at the back of their brain. The difference is, they kept walking the path. Cracks and all.

And if you do the same—keep showing up, keep pouring yourself into the process, keep leaking a little water every day—you’ll be amazed at what grows.

You don’t have to be flawless to be useful. You don’t have to be brilliant to be beautiful. And you sure as hell don’t need to write like anyone else to make an impact.

You just need to walk your path.

Let the seeds you’ve planted over the years—your discipline, your voice, your scars, your strange and wonderful perspective—be watered by your imperfections.

Keep writing.

You have no idea how many flowers are blooming because of you.

Kill Zoners – Show us your cracks.

33 thoughts on “What Good Are Your Cracks?”

  2. Very inspirational and much needed. As writers this is something we don’t pause to consider often enough.

    I wrestle with myself on many fronts. As a reader, I don’t tend toward the ‘popular’, nor are the stories I choose to write typically in the most popular genres. But it’s where my interest lies. And I keep hoping that one day plotting will be magical and instantaneous, but then doubt myself because it never seems to get easier. Especially when you’re trying to plot a series.

    And while I often lose sight of it, I do believe that flowers will bloom because of my writing – how many flowers isn’t up to me. I just need to write.

  3. Arthur Marx couldn’t remember his lines, so he created the mute character Harpo.

    Jimi Hendrix had synesthesia, a neurological condition in which sensations associated with one sense stimulated others. He often interpreted sounds as colors, as in his classic “Purple Haze.”

    The biologist E. O. Wilson lost the ability to see birds at a distance due to a fishing accident, and studied ants instead, leading to his groundbreaking work in animal societies and the development of sociobiology.

    • Good morning, Terry. I have no idea who first came up with the writing advice of “butt in chair, fingers on keys” but I don’t know of any better.

  5. Beautiful, Garry!!! We become obsessed with what we do wrong or don’t do well enough and fail to see how the benefits that our writing yields.

    We rarely know the effect our writing has on readers but sometimes it’s more profound than we realize.

    Thank you for this wonderful story.

  6. Thanks, Debbie. I stumbled upon this story on a feed I follow by Sahil Bloom, who is an Indian thought leader. Come to think of it right now, I wonder if Sahil realized the connection between his last name and the cruxt of this timeless Indian story.

  7. I also needed this story today, Garry. Learning to improve as a writer is part of TKZ, and we also learn by practice and by what we’ve written, but we’re never going to be perfect.

    We’re never going to be exactly like [fill in the blank]famous best selling author, but that’s fine, the world already has that writer. What we have to offer is our own, unique, idiosyncratic voice and POV, cracks and all. Imperfection is part of the package, and like Debbie noted, we’ll never know all of the impact our words have on a reader.

  9. A classic story and a valuable lesson. I have been going through a lot this year. Good to be reminded that you don’t need to be perfect to get the job done.

    One quick story. I was going to a fancy party with my mother. She told me to wear my jean jacket. I thought it was pretty casual for the occasion, but I listened. She introduced me to the pediatrician who said I would never be good at sports. On my jacket were my two varsity letters.

        • My best revenge came looong ago, after being the first female ever hired as an emergency dispatcher at a local police department, because of course, a woman couldn’t do that job, especially one that wasn’t even old enough to vote. The anti was so strong the chief left town so he didn’t have to do the official hiring. I was told if I didn’t cut it, they’d be free to never hire a woman again.

          It was very sweet to look around the comm center 7 years later…at nothing but women.

  11. Lovely story, Garry. And a great one to ponder on as we go forward with all our goals and schedules staring us in the face! 🙂

    Btw, can’t recall if you mentioned this, but does this story come from a book or folk tale?

    • Good morning, Kay. I think it’s a folk tale. I got it from a site I follow that’s hosted by Sahil Bloom who is of Indian ethnic origin and he indicated it’s an ancient Indian story.

  12. Sometimes I worry so much about the oh-so-many cracks in my pot, fussing with them in an effort to “fix” them, that I forget they are what make me and everything I write unique. Thank you for this incredibly timely reminder, Garry!

    • You’re most welcome, Suzanne. There’s an ancient Japanese art called Kitsugi where cracked pots are repaired using gold inlays and bindings. I was going to reference it, but then I thought I’ll just let the story rest on its own.

  14. Thank you for this beautifully inspiring post! I needed the encouragement. As you alluded to with Suzanne, this story and the ensuing comments have “filled some cracks” with gold—the golden realization that we are not alone.

    It also made me think how we writers know that a perfect Lead character won’t resonate with readers—it’s the flaws, struggles, and cracks that make them memorable and real.

    In the same way, each of us is the protagonist of our own story. We do well to give ourselves the same care and love we give our Leads.

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