When Diana Gabaldon sat down to write her first novel, she did it for practice. She’d not written fiction before and figured that the best way to learn – and see if she’s any good at it – is to just write one. She settled on historical fiction because, by her own admission, if it turned out that she had no imagination, she could at least look things up in the historical record. (Her imagination was just fine).
That novel was Outlander, first published in 1991. Outlander broke all the rules, went on to sell millions of copies, has become a world-wide phenomenon, a series of nine more books, a bunch of side-quest novellas, a TV series and a massive, dedicated fandom.
It was a similar story for Toby Fox, who had a kernel of an idea (a computer game where not killing all monsters was actually an option), but had no experience of making a game from scratch. He did it anyway, writing all the code, dialogue and music, as well as the logic behind the game’s twelve different endings and innovative battle design. In 2015, Undertale was released and amassed a million downloads in its first year, going on to become a cult classic among gamers, and showing how it was possible to defy all expectations and make a game that was philosophical as well as entertaining.
Of course not everything we make becomes an instant hit and impacts millions of people. Most things won’t. But that’s not the take away from Diana and Toby’s stories.
The take away is to just begin.
Begin, despite not quite knowing what you’re doing.
Begin, despite never having done it before.
Begin, and trust that you will learn what you need in the process.
Begin, an iterate as and when you need to.
Begin, and don’t aim for perfection (Undertale’s code is famously very messy, for example).
Begin, and embrace an open mind, detach yourself from expectations of the end result, experiment and play.
Begin, and stay with the discomfort of not knowing where it will lead to.
Take the first step, and the path will appear.
When I work with people, whether in group mentoring programmes or one-on-one, I often hear them say that they aren’t good enough / experienced enough yet to do the thing they want to do, to work on a project they want to work on, to launch the thing they want to launch.
If I’m honest, I have those moments of inner freakouts too. I have to talk myself out of the spiral of impostor syndrome – or ask mentors or friends for a bit of mental fortitude. I have to remind myself of the times when I didn’t quite know what I was doing, but I did it anyway – and it all worked out, because I figured it out as I went along.
Or, as Steven Pressfied says in The War of Art, “Stay stupid. Trust the soup. Start before you’re ready”.
So, I leave you with these questions:
What is the kernel of idea you keep coming back to, but afraid to pursue? What are you consistently being called towards?
What will you begin?
