Mermaids, airplanes, and surviving the gap between idea and done
Let’s talk about the joys (and occasional horrors) of creativity and making stuff.
A friend of mine once asked me what it was like to be a writer, and I said, “A constant state of grief and disappointment.” That was a terrible thing to say. You should have seen the look on his face.
While it’s kind of true, it leaves out how much I really love making stuff. When I’m working on a video or a song, I literally lose time, like Mulder and Scully in a UFO encounter.
But getting from idea to done is a lot of hard work. Except when it isn’t. Like the time I was visited by a mermaid when I was about a thousand feet in the air.
Let me explain.
The mermaid in the sky
I wasn’t afraid of flying, then I was, then I got over it. It’s a long story, but the upshot is that I still close my eyes during takeoff, during the transitional zone between ground and sky. When everything below us is tiny, I open my eyes again and don’t worry for the rest of the flight.
And on this one flight, while I had my eyes closed, a poem about mermaids arrived behind my eyelids. I ran it through my head a few times, and by the time we hit cruising altitude, it was more or less complete. Meter, rhyme, the whole shebang.
This never happens.
I turned to Mari and asked if she had a notebook and pen I could borrow1. I wrote down what I had, and immediately saw how to animate it. When we got home, I set up the entire video in a couple of hours. I was pretty happy with it.
This, also, never happens. Here it is:
This video was accepted as an official selection by my favorite film festival, The HP Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR2.
No agony, no regret. A smooth process from idea to done.
So why did this experience stand out so much? Because:
Ideas are just the start…
The idea is the first step of making anything. And I’ve always had a problem with ideas.
I have too many. This is not a boast.
I’ve got, at last estimate, over 300 incomplete projects, concepts, and fragments stored away, and an additional 120+ melody phrases I’ve burbled into Voice Memos on my phone. It’s a lot.
And again, I’m not boasting—quite the opposite. Because none of these ideas are done.
Now, I do get some things done—just in the last year I released a couple of limited-run podcasts, completed two videos, and sent one out on the film festival circuit. And I started this blog/newsletter, as experiment in creating an engine of done.
But, as you can see from my idea count and my irregular newsletter cadence, my gap between idea and done is huge. And it keeps getting bigger.
…and ideas can be fragile
Ideas are beautiful, ephemeral things. They float and dart like dragonflies, their myriad colors reflecting in the sun. It’s so nice to just sit and watch them dance about. And then you think, “I want to share this beautiful idea.” So you grab it out of the air with your meaty paw and smash it onto the page. And that beautiful idea becomes a pulped streak of entrails and broken wings in the vague shape and suggestion of its former glory.
At this point I usually recoil like Vincent Price in the final act of a Roger Corman movie, and scurry away from the grisly scene. But if I can summon the courage, I then creep back and begin the long process of scraping the remains into a shape more like the original idea: moving pieces, constructing replacement parts, polishing off as much of the blood as possible.
That’s the grief I was talking about. But I’m starting to learn to get past it. I keep reminding myself that it’s not important if the done doesn’t look as snazzy as my original idea. Because:
We can’t see the idea, we can only see the done
Even if the final result—the done—ends up as a weird simulacra of my original idea and I have to squint to see any hint of its former appeal, nobody else can compare the done to the idea in my head. Because it was only in my head. They can only see the idea when I get it to done. And so they judge the done as it is.
Maybe they’ll like it. Maybe it will speak to some life experience of theirs that I have no way of knowing. The point is, it’s hard for me to judge. I have to have the faith, the bravery, to get to done, and then to show it to others.
Now, done can for me can mean writing a story, making a video, recording a song—even just telling a joke. Each one is a series of efforts to take an idea and put it through the meat grinder of expression without losing its living essence.
So did I learn anything from the mermaid?
As unexpected as the whole mermaid experience3 was, it actually reinforced what I try to keep reminding myself:
Your audience can’t see your ideas until you transform them into something done.
Transforming an idea to done4 can be really hard on the idea, and the ideator.
Occasionally, very occasionally, it can be easy. And easily done comes from previously done. Especially when you’ve gotten enough stuff done that you have your tools and techniques ready. The mermaid video came after I had already released a couple dozen other videos. When the idea showed up, I knew a way to express it.
Over to you
The human brain is the most complex structure we know of. In the universe5. So you undoubtedly have some great ideas in that complex structure of yours. Just remember that I and everybody else can’t see them until you get them to done.
I’m not just talking about videos or novels. Your idea could be that new bed you’re planning for your garden, or that volunteer gig you’ve been wanting to try, or just letting a loved one know that they are a loved one.
Getting any idea to done is hard. But worth it. I’m looking forward to seeing what you do.
Until then,
I remain,
Your pal,
Jamie
Mari always has a notebook and pen.
You should go, seriously. It is a surprisingly warm and welcoming event.
If there isn’t a band named “The Mermaid Experience,” there should be.
For an inspiring view of done, I highly recommend Bre Pettis and Kio Stark’s Cult of Done Manifesto. Join the cult!
86 billion neurons, 85 billion other cells, and over 100 trillion connections.