Do the Thing in Secret... Publicly

I’ve always been a person who can’t help but imagine putting himself in the creator’s shoes. I read a book. I watch a movie. I play a game. The thought in my mind is always the same: “I bet I could make my own.” Perhaps this is unique to so-called creative people. I don’t know. Perhaps, for each person, it’s limited to particular things. I’ve never pictured myself composing music, for instance, as much as I love music.

Maybe you’ve never imagined yourself writing a book like the one you just devoured, or envisioned yourself in the director’s chair after watching magic on screen. But if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably, at one point or another, told someone that you were going to accomplish a goal you’d barely began moving toward… if at all.

I was that kid. I’m writing a book. I’m making a movie. I’m making a game. No sooner did the ideas occur to me did I announce my new plans. But I didn’t do these things; they were only ideas.

Looking back, I think part of the excitement of telling people these things is that you get to be, if only for a moment, an interesting person with interesting ideas who does interesting things.

But even if I started these things, I seldom finished. So before too long you just become a person who talks a lot and tells everyone not to “steal” your ideas. And that’s not a very interesting person.

Maybe now I’m at risk of becoming that kid again.

🐣 Be the Person who has Done the Thing

I lurk on a few forums for writers who self-publish. Reddit’s r/selfpublish sub is one, the 20 Books to 50k group on Facebook is another. And while every Internet group has its own quirky netiquette and rude members who enforce it, they also have a lot of novices trying to suss out just what to do in order to find the success they see modeled among the group’s heroes.

But the answer, occasionally harshly delivered, is always the same: do the work.*
(* and do it well)

These groups in particular exist around the topic of how to turn work-well-done into success-well-earned. But the attraction of many (myself included) is to skip the first part and jump to the second. Very few are focused on doing the work at all, let alone doing it well.

You may rightly point out that there are doubtless other groups for the craft of writing. I lurk in those, too, and they have the same problem. The groups’ top posts are people saying they’ve finally done it, and among the masses are many people who say they want to do it.

It’s the same in every group for every goal imaginable. Weight loss, woodworking, even groups about video games for goodness sake. If you want to count yourself among the cohort who has “done the thing,” you first need to “do the thing.” Don’t cash in your intention too early and burn up your credibility. Instead, do it, and don’t tell anyone until later. It’ll be much more impressive once it’s done.

🤐 Forever Lurking

But this isn’t a tough love motivational post. The thing is, you don’t need to have mastered the thing. Especially after growing tired of residing in the camp of wishers, it’s easy to fall into another camp: the camp of never-finishers, and never-good-enough-ers.

Everyone you look up to as a master of their craft knows their own flaws well. They can see how much room they have for improvement. And it’s likely more than you’d imagine. The wishers don’t know those things about themselves. Because they’ve never tried.

Once you’ve tried, and taken that first small step, you’ll know it about yourself. Congratulations. You’re already out of the camp of wishers and onto the same part of the spectrum the masters can spot themselves on. The only remaining difference between them and you is that they published their flawed work, and you did not.

I write this post now because I find myself in the camp of never-good-enough-ers. I shy away from ideas I like for fear that I don’t yet have the skill to execute them. And the ones I do commit to fail to meet my own standards. But my advice to anyone else in this situation would be to get over themselves. By the time you’ve mustered up the courage to show someone else something you’ve actually done, odds are you’re farther along than 99% of people will ever be. You don’t have to be very good to be better than everyone who has never tried; and that’s most people.

🌎 The World Wants to See

Your effort is valuable. People want to see it. There’s a reason people enjoyed the special features so much when DVDs first hit the shelves. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is almost as often remembered for its extensive behind the scenes documentaries as for the films themselves.

People buy art books to accompany their favorite films. They read biographies of their favorite authors and musicians. People are hungry to see more of the work. Even the work that didn’t make the final cut. For true fans, the process is part of the appeal.

A small selection of my own art books.

🐜 Small Victories

The reason for doing more creative work in public isn’t to err on the side of declaring too much intention and delivering too little of value. It’s to recognize that the value can come in smaller sizes than what you might think.

If there’s value in publishing an intimidating tome of epic fantasy to daunt even the most avid reader, filled with maps and glossaries and appendices, then there’s value in publishing one novel. If there’s value in a novel, there’s value in a novella. And if there’s value in that, then maybe there’s value in even smaller pieces of work.

The Internet has enabled publishing even the smallest efforts, each of which may represent a level of craftsmanship that many will never achieve. This is certainly not to say that every idea anyone has ever had is worth sharing and capitalizing on. And it’s not to say that this style of publishing is appropriate and preferred in all cases. It’s merely to say that sitting on the sidelines for fear of never being good enough knows no bounds.

To that end, I intend to be more creative more often and for more people. And I think the world would be a more interesting place if others were as well.

🔌 Shameless Plug

My novella, Valen the Rogue in the Domain of Darkness, is available on Amazon as an eBook and in paperback.