By Colleen McCarthy-Evans
“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” — Pablo Picasso
Creativity is as much a part of being human as walking upright, feeling compassion, and playing Scrabble. And that oh-so human urge to create is often followed by a secondary urge: to share our creation. This takes courage and skill—to accept the often less than enthusiastic responses, looks of benign confusion on the faces of family and friends, and even “professional” rejection—with grace. Which brings us to a third and perhaps the most challenging urge to satisfy: the desire to be paid for our creation.
If you’re with me so far, and you’re buying this notion that every human on the planet is a creator, it makes sense then, that there’s a lot of competition for the dollars to be made in creative fields. Creating for a living…well, who wouldn’t want to? So, I guess the good news is, we’re not alone.
Early in my post-childhood career as a creator, I chose theater as my venue. Still young and naive, it took 7 years of banging my head against the stage door before I decided to shift gears. I did better making a living as a graphic designer and craftsperson for a spell but, eventually, those mediums denied me the freedom to use all of my wonderful emerging talents, to which I wanted to become accustomed.
So, I threw myself into co-founding an arts-based charter school, just in time to enroll my 5-year-old in its inaugural kindergarten class. Though this was another unpaid exercise in creativity, I learned a whole lot about children, families, education, and what it meant to be a creative collaborator, all of which would come in very handy in my future career as a game inventor. Ah, if only I’d had a crystal ball…
After 8 years of actually getting paid to help run the fledgling school, one day I realized the “creation” was complete, and I needed to get my creative juices flowing again.
So, I had this idea for a board game, and enlisted one of my actor friends to help me with it. Thanks to some dumb luck and divine timing, we got it published! After that, while still employed at the school, I began designing games in my spare time (of which I had none) with another inventor, and we got a licensing deal, too. With those two little bits of encouragement from the universe, along with my spouse’s tentative okay, I decided to give up the paycheck and take a leap of faith into a new career.
But, fast forward ahead 5 years, and I’m feeling a bit discouraged again. Even though half a dozen games I’ve co-designed have been published, I’m not seeing the kind of return on my creative investment I’d imagined. I decide to do the only rational thing possible: I went to see an astrologer.
She told me it would be two more years before I’d see the fruits of my labors. How would I endure those next years? Barely breathing as I drove home, I had the brilliant idea to count up all the rejections I’d gotten to date. There were over 800! If you taped all those ‘thanks but no thanks’ emails and letters together, and laid them out flat, they would span two football fields and a bowling alley! No wonder I was feeling a little blue. But what are ya’ gonna do? Well, I wept uncontrollably for the rest of the day, then picked myself up, dusted myself off, and went on creating. Now, another 5 years later, and a couple dozen published games under my belt (and a couple hundred more rejections, but who’s counting), I’m breathing a little easier.
“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” — Linus Pauling
So, I guess the point is, let’s just keep on creating. If necessary, we keep searching until we find the medium that allows us the tremendous and supremely human joy of sharing our creative gifts. Some make money, some don’t, so we must be brave and continue to bring all our remarkable humanity and creativity “back to the drawing board” over and over again.
“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” — Buckminster Fuller
Contributed by Colleen McCarthy Evans
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