He said, "Pick any short story you like and adapt it into a screenplay. "Ambition is crippled by lack of confidence."Īnd then, one glorious day in college, one of my writing professors asked me to write something-an adaptation. My ambition, as Ramelan so perfectly puts it, was crippled by my lack of confidence, a confidence that was born out of my perceived ability to be "original," and yet, I couldn't help but recognize my ideas in pretty much every film, book, and painting I came across. I went from making a video every day and a short film every few months to struggling to finish a single page of a screenplay because I just knew that it wasn't going to be good enough. "What if all of my work is shit?" "What if people see my work and think I'm shit?" "What if I am shit and everything I make is shit and I'll never be able to do anything other than make shit?" Clearly, this was a very shitting time in my creative life. In fact, the majority of my work was created in my first year. When I first started out as a filmmaker, I was writing screenplays and making videos and short films left and right. If this problem resonates with you, you should check out this video from Zach Ramelan, who offers up an inspirational message for those warring with the "It's Already Been Done" mentality. I mean, it wouldn't be a huge deal if this kind of thing happened every once in a while, but it's something that constantly keeps so many creatives from actually creating anything-and it's not only the fear of being redundant or unoriginal, it's also the fear of their work not measuring up to its similars. It's where you get an idea for a project, you're super psyched about it, and then all of a sudden your heart sinks as you begin to realize that, man, the idea you were so passionate about three seconds ago has been creatively realized already-and then you scrap it. ![]() Let's call it the "It's Already Been Done" mentality. There's this common mentality that creatives tend to have that keeps them from making the things they want to make. ![]() "I shouldn't do the thing I want to do because it has already been done before." Poppycock!
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