‘You Should Just Start Creating’
Over the last few months I’ve been trying to overcome a hurdle which has always been difficult for me: Waiting until everything is just right to start or release a project.
Yet the more that I’ve grown creatively, the more I’ve recognized that things may never be ‘just right’…but that shouldn’t stop me from making something anyways.
One of the greatest sources of inspiration in this category has become the works of the McElroy family, hosts and creators of a massive amount of projects:
When they’re not devoting their time to considering the questions of ‘Yahoo Answers’ on My Brother My Brother and Me, or creating lovable abominations in Monster Factory, or breaking down the insanity of the Bachelor series on Rose Buddies, they’re also creating a work of collaborative fiction called ‘The Adventure Zone’.
The first Adventure Zone story recently came to an end after several years, and McElroy brother Justin gave a brilliant post-mortem charge to the audience, saying this:
I hope if nothing else The Adventure Zone reminds you that you should just start creating. We made this story that I am incredibly proud of, but when we started, we had no IDEA what we were doing. We just started making stuff.
If you’ve been holding off on creating that thing because you’re waiting to have it all figured out: Stop. Just start making it. You don’t even have to make it in public, like we did, in fact, that is scary and maybe inadvisable. But just start the work and stop waiting.
If you wait for lightning to strike, you’ll wait forever. Time and time again I’ve found, creativity favors those who show up.
It’s hard to remember how true this is, and The Adventure Zone is a great example of the reality. What started off as a one-off break from their typical show (a lighthearted recording of a Dungeons and Dragons playthrough!) turned into a story full of heart, character, and humor.
In fact, I believe that if they would have waited until everything felt ‘right’, so many of the pieces which I loved the most would have never existed. Creativity does indeed favor those who show up, and there’s a good chance that lightning will strike without you even realizing exactly what happened.
