PEW-CHOO. PEW-CHOO. Laser blasts whizz past a single-man starfighter as it navigates the metallic canyons of the DEATH STAR. A young moisture farmer turned X-Wing pilot, LUKE SKYWALKER, nervously focuses on his approaching target. Sweat drips down his brow as he shakily pulls his targeting apparatus in front of his helmet visor… but a strong and reassuring voice interrupts his movement.
“Move over Luke.”
“Huh?” Luke questions the voice of his fallen mentor, OBI-WAN KENOBI.
“Let go Luke.” Obi-Wan responds, “I can take it from here.”
Quickly, Luke climbs into the small cargo space in the back of the cockpit and curls into a fetal position. The Force ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi appears in the pilot’s seat deus ex machina. His shimmering Force ghost hands grip the yoke.
PEW. PEW. PEW. Obi-Wan takes the shot! KABOOM. The Death Star implodes. The white helmets on Yavin 4 high-five each other and cheers frothy mugs of fermented blue milk.
THE END. ROLL CREDITS.
This is not an excerpt from Riann Johnson’s script for the remake of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It is an anti-climactic version of Luke’s hero’s journey and a reminder that heroes take action. Moreso, specific to our Creators Co. blog, creators take action.
It seems the word “creativity” often gets lost in some whimsical fairyland of dreams and high ideas without regard to its root word, “create”. Create is a verb (action word) that means to bring something into existence. Creativity is more than imagination, it’s the act of bringing imagination into reality.
And for this reason, as a creator, you must take action. “But Tom, I’m just a moisture farmer from the desert planet Tatooine, how can I ever become a creator when I’m constantly working to make enough peggats to pay the Hutts for my rent and utilities?”
This is a valid question. The bridge between working for money and creating for work is a real transition that typically cannot be accomplished overnight (without defaulting on your bills and ending up in a sarlacc pit). So I’m going to give you three simple steps you can take towards becoming the creator you were made to be (without ending up in a Chapter 7 sarlacc pit-cy).
Step 1: STUDY. Give yourself thirty minutes to study your creative area of interest each day. Depending on what you’re interested in, there’s lots of ways to do this: filmmakers can watch films with directors’ commentaries turned on, poets can read a poem and then research its form and meaning online, painters can watch video essays about their favorite paintings on YouTube, etc.
The idea here is that you move from being a passive consumer of the art form you love into being a thoughtful consumer. As you learn how the art is created you will be equipped with tools to create your own art. Furthermore, you may learn more about where your creative instincts truly align and move to another form of creativity, but you can’t get there without putting in the time. Trust me, you’ll survive watching one fewer Friends rerun each day.
Step 2: MAKE STUFF. You have to put perfectionism on the shelf and actually perform the act where you’re at with what you have if you want to move into a creative life. Somewhere (hopefully to never see the light of day) I have poorly shot iPhone videos that I experimented with as I began my career as a filmmaker. They’re ugly, but making them was an essential part of the process of figuring out what I didn’t know so I could know how to STUDY (see above).
Schedule time each week to MAKE STUFF. This might mean forgoing hitting the bars on Saturday night or binge watching SUITS on Sunday, but you will get far more satisfaction out of fostering that creative desire within you than can be offered by waking up hungover on Sunday morning.
Step 3: SEEK AN EXPERT. Just as that moisture farmer on Tatooine needed a veteran guide, you’ll need people with experience to come alongside you on your hero’s journey into creativity. There are plenty of people who have made the leap from the working life into the creative life that will be more than happy to offer advice and encouragement to you on your journey.
Choose five local professionals who are experts in the area of your creative interests, and send them direct messages via social media. Let them know what you appreciate about their work and then ask them if they have any advice for someone just starting out in the field. Give them a week to respond and if you don’t hear anything back, reach out to five different professionals.
Reaching out may lead to finding a regular mentor or it may just garner some useful information for your journey, either way, building relationships within your chosen area of creativity in your local area will better prepare you for future success as your career grows. Furthermore, it will better equip you to be a mentor to others upon becoming an expert yourself.
I believe all people were made to create, including you. Yet it’s so easy to let life’s fears and exhaustion hold us back from putting in the time and effort it takes to become creators. I know this firsthand, but if you STUDY, MAKE STUFF, and SEEK EXPERTS in a disciplined manner, like Luke, you’ll take the first steps into your own hero’s journey, or as I like to call it, The Creator’s Journey.
Lastly, always remember, the creator’s journey requires you to take action. For Luke’s story to find its full catharsis, he needed to use the force and pull the trigger himself. If Obi-Wan does it for him, Luke is no longer a hero, he’s just another NPC on TikTok raking in the money. You were built to be more than an NPC. If you’re willing to take action, you can be a hero and a creator. As Luke would say, “It’s not impossible. I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home.”
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