As important as it is to have a big, wild, crazy dream, you have to have a neat, tiny, manageable plan to go with it.  I spent 24 years thinking big dreams needed big plans to bring them to reality.  No.  No no no no no no no.

You’ve got to reframe.  Big plans require a lot of money, special places, and pricey equipment that you won’t be able to afford or won’t have access to.  Perhaps the toughest thing about big plans is that they need a team of skilled and reliable people – yeah, try finding that.

It’s okay for the ultimate goal to match your wildest dreams.  In fact, that’s the inspiration it takes to keep you going.  But your path up the mountain had better involve producing INDEPENDENT and TANGIBLE results.

The “tangible” part I probably don’t need to explain, because chances are, you’ve already met those people who like to toss ideas around but never do anything.  The other aspect is keeping bits of progress separate.  Independent, if you will.

It’s great if you can make measurable progress towards your big dream, but what happens if/when resources dry up and/or everyone disappears?  Can the progress made at any of those stages stand alone?

In other words, does what you’ve created work or make sense if it’s yet to reach its full glory?  Is your big dream an incomplete goal comprised of many complete pieces, just fewer than you’d aimed for?  Or is it a crazy mix of things that’s become useless as things fell apart?

Let’s say it all falls apart 20% of the way through.  Do you have 20% of the things you wanted, ready to go?  Or do you have a shapeless mass that’s stopped one fifth of the way to being whatever it was supposed to be?

My advice if you are just starting to tackle a massive project is to design it such that its separate components are still useful without the other parts.  They might not be as amazing on their own, but at least they’re still recognizable and workable.  The process of a major project is a perilous one, and if you ever need to pack up the bits and pieces, it should be more like packing a suitcase and less like salvaging a train wreck. 

If you are already in the long haul, I wish you luck.  If/when things fall apart, fear not.  You can still reframe it.  That is, look at what you have left of your resources and use them to the fullest by applying them to the essence of your project.  If you can’t make your big project anymore, that’s okay.  Make SOME of it.  And then once you’ve got that completely DONE, use what you’ve created to move up again.

Remember that cartoon I was working on?  Things unexpectedly fell apart, as things sometimes do.  But it’s not over yet, not by a long shot.  Once I was done cussing and shaking my fist at the ceiling, I look a good long look at what I had left.  I had…me.

I have my writing skills and networking skills.  I have my contacts and I’ve built and maintained a rapport with people who might still be able to help.

But let’s take it a step further.  Let’s say I don’t want to rely on anything or anybody just yet.  I will need to eventually, but let’s look at what independent and separate thing I can create, without waiting for anybody else.

I had written most of the scripts for this series, so the next time opportunity appears, I’ll have those ready.  Even if it never does, I’ve still built up a fictional town and some really great characters, who, as the cartoon hasn’t gone anywhere yet, are free to wander to other media.

Which is where I put those two ideas together – my characters plus my writing skills – I’ll write a book!  Okay, so the cartoon is now a book.  Or a series of books.

So now it’s going somewhere again.  I can’t make a whole cartoon by myself, but I can write a book.

The other thing to take into account when you’re dealing with the smoking ruins of a group project is who can lay claim to what.  The writing and storylines were nearly entirely my intellectual property, but there were still two other people who were involved in the project as a whole.

Thankfully, one person claims not to care either way and the other is miraculously still onside (if there is dispute in your case, you’re best off making up a new series on your own).  This person who stayed in it for the long run is the artist/animator, so she can do the illustrations.  The books will be a portfolio for the both of us, and also a sample for the series (which may still one day become a cartoon). 

But perhaps most importantly, they will be books on their own.  Not a collection of notes about what might be, not a half-finished beat sheet or business plan, but books in their own right.  So that means we’ve done something. We’ve taken our idea and created something tangible from it.  Reframing.

When a project gets diluted with ifs and maybes and eventualities and laziness and confusion, that’s when it’s time to scale it down.  Take what you have FOR SURE and put that towards a standalone goal from which nothing and no one can stop you.  I can write a book, just like I’ve written several seasons’ worth of scripts.  This artist can draw the people and places for the illustrations, just like she designed all the concept art.  We can plan it, make it, publish it, and market it ourselves.  No more hearing excuses from other people.  No more waiting.

And so, I encourage you not to give up, even when everything you’ve worked so hard towards is lying in ruins.  You still have yourself, and therefore all the skills and knowledge you’ve acquired along the way.  You still have everything you used to get you to where you are now.  If you’ve gotten this far, you have patience, creativity, fortitude, and stamina.  You’ve got the brains to plan out an alternate route.  Remember, you are not giving up on your big, wild, crazy dream.  You’re reframing it, to make it easier to realize.  If you’ve come this far, the hardest part is actually over, because all this disaster should make it perfectly clear what you do and don’t have, who you can and can’t rely on.  By now, you know what you have to do.

Don’t give up now.  We can do this.

- Your fellow Creative Crusader, Tamara Hecht