This is as much a reminder (and bit of encouragement) for me as it is for anyone else.

Rarely does beautiful/brilliant/layered/”good” art happen with the first try. I happen to believe that’s because art becomes those things when it takes on textures and can mean many things to many people – while still expressing the viewpoint of the artist clearly.

The key skill to develop is something in the world of editing or iterating or tweaking. I don’t want to diminish the value of originality of ideas, but those ideas only get a chance to bloom with time and perspective.

And in order to edit or iterate, we need to have a starting point. Usually, that’s a first draft of a script, or a prototype of a prop, or a sketch of a painting, or any of a million other beginnings.

So write that first draft. It will almost definitely be terrible. Give yourself permission for it to suck because once you have that God-awful outline, we can start to slowly but surely make it much less bad. Maybe some day it will even get good!