It’s almost 11pm and I haven’t finished this week’s blog post. This morning I was scrambling to find an idea. I ended up looking at some old posts I’d written. Posts I had written, thought they weren’t good enough and scrapped. This is one of those posts. It’s fitting too. It’s about making a lot of something. It’s about making things that aren’t good enough.
There’s an anecdote about making 10 000 bad drawings before you can make a good one. This is somewhat true, it takes time and practice to get good. Creating and storytelling are skills that have to be developed. That means we need the practice of creating and finishing projects. Your first pitch probably won’t get picked up. A first novel probably won’t be published. Part of the process is making lots of things that don’t connect, that don’t quite work on the path to making something that does.
“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work-and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.” Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland
Advice that I used to ignore was to create short content. I ignored it because I thought I was above shorts. I wanted to tell big important stories that had big deep meaning, stakes and action. I couldn’t do that in short format. The reason you make shorts isn’t because you can’t handle a big story, it’s because making something small let’s you fail faster.
You will fail, that’s the point. You will make stuff that doesn’t fit your intention or vision. You will make stuff that is cliched, simplistic, confusing, dishonest, and boring. These will all be lessons you need to learn. Making short content let’s you see these mistakes and missteps in clear focus. This will prepare you for the bigger work, and make that bigger work more successful.
The key is not to wait. Every week I write a lot of things that don’t make it to the blog. That’s part of the process. By making many we can learn with each one. We can revisit our ideas. Tackle a different aspect of what we are trying to say. The only way to develop your voice is by speaking.
Indie Animated 