I’ve been working on this musical for what even I acknowledge to be way too long, and today I was confronted about it.
Essentially, I had a conversation with God this morning where He said to me that my relationship to this project needs to change.
We said previously that I had been engaging this project as a writer, as somebody who was only responsible for the writing of it. And so I was trying to busy myself with writing everything down and making sure that the script was perfect. But He said that it’s time for me to approach this as a builder.
The other thing that He said that I was busy doing was approaching this as a visionary. I was approaching this project as the writer and the visionary, somebody who had the idea and who was making sure that they wrote the vision and made it plain so that somebody else could come behind me and build it.
And I did not realize that that was the case.
I knew that I had gotten distracted with thinking about the intellectual property of it all. And so I had decided to step away from that part because before I could talk to anybody about that, I need to have defined it for myself.
And yesterday, He spoke to me about distraction and about how it’s easy to be distracted by things that seem good. Or it’s easy to be distracted by things that seem good, that seem like they are in line with what it is that you are supposed to be doing. But if it takes you away from the actual goal that you’re supposed to be striving towards, if it pulls you away in any fashion, then you know that that is a distraction, no matter how good or right or beneficial or helpful it is.
And so I had decided to step away from the IP of it all because of that reason.
Just hearing Him say to me this morning that I’ve been approaching this like a visionary and like the writer, and not like the builder, was very sobering. It did cause me to realize that I have been spending an inordinate amount of time on the writing of it all, and I have been trying to make it perfect.
This is something that I realized previously because I had a huge revelation, I think it was last week, where I realized that even after I write the script, it’s going to be workshopped. It’s going to be looked over by people who will have opinions and suggestions. The writing of the script is not the end-all, be-all. It’s not the end of the writing project. There will be revisions.
Somebody told me, like literally right up until production, there will be things that are changed. Someone said, like, I was watching the video, I think it was, and it was like right up until opening night, there’s some things that are in flux. There’s some things that’ll be changed. Like, on the night of, there’s some things that are changed.
And I had to wrap my brain around that. Not from a “you don’t have to make sure everything is good because other people are going to improve it” sort of position, but from a “you could only do what you know how to do, and you have to trust other people to bring their expertise to the work” position.
Because the truth is, while I love musicals, I’m not a musical producer. While I am a writer, and I do believe that I have some skill in writing, I am not somebody who can write something and immediately go to publish. I don’t think anybody can do that.
And so thinking that I could write the script and that it would be perfect from the get-go is wild.
Another thing that I’m having another thought about right now is that just because I say I’m writing the musical, and I have the ideas for songs in my mind, and I have an idea of where I want them to go, does not mean that I have to write all of the songs.
I had previously begun reaching out to people who songwrite for that very reason, but I got frustrated because I wasn’t getting any responses. But I also have to agree and accept that I don’t have to write all of the songs.
I can have a script that is 100% done in the plot of it all. I can have the book of the script complete, but the songs may need to be reworked. It may all need to be reworked. And that’s fine.
I think I just needed to realize again that what I thought was complete is not complete, and that’s fine because writing a musical is a collaborative process.
And again, that’s something different for me because I am used to doing things by myself. I am used to having to do things by myself, particularly writing. I’m used to writing by myself. And so the idea that I get a draft to a certain point and then I begin working with somebody else who’s going to work on the draft and bring their own thoughts to it is a little bit baffling to me because that’s not usually how I work.
But that is what this process is. And so I have to shift.
And that’s, I think, a part of the shift from being the writer, thinking that writing this thing makes or determines something about my identity, and shifting from that space to the identity of a builder.
That is so interesting because I previously have gone this last two years through the process of redefining my identity from somebody who was enamored with the idea of being an entrepreneur and forming my identity around that, to forming my identity around the fact that I’m a writer.
God has called me a scribe. I have always been a writer. I’ve been writing for about as long as I’ve been alive. I’ve gotten awards, or at least one award, for writing. Writing has been the thing that has really sustained me. It’s the thing that my business was based on.
And so now, the thought that I need to shift from thinking of myself as a writer, or the writer of this project, as if that is all that I can be, to thinking of myself as the person who is building this project, who’s building this vision, is a realization I did not think I needed to have.
And so that’s my thought.
I spent a lot of today thinking through that and trying to determine what that would look like. And ultimately, I decided that it looks like me going forward with the same plans that I had made previously, like last week, of starting a blog, being more intentional blogging, I should actually say, and creating videos.
And the challenge with that was that there’s really three different audiences that I can speak to in my videos. And if I’m going to step away from the creative IP stuff, then it really would be two audiences for now.
But then again, that also reaffirms that I’m not just a writer, but I’m building something.
I’m somebody who has to build an audience. I have to build interest and buy-in around this universe while simultaneously building the actual infrastructure to make this vision come to pass.
Of course, with the grace of God. Absolutely with the grace of God, because this is much bigger than me, and I cannot do it alone. I have to do it with His strength and with His power and with His might.
But my part in that extends beyond just getting everything down on paper. It has to extend into being the builder on the ground.
Like, if God is the client who’s building a house, then essentially I would be the contractor who’s working with the architect, who is dealing with logistics, who is doing the work to actually build the house.
And that is something that I’m not used to, but I’m open to learning how to do.
And so my relationship to this project has changed from just the writer of the musical, the writer of the novel, the one who’s writing the vision, to the builder of the vision.
I now have to build this.
And that is the place from which I am going to walk, empowered by God, by the way. Not trying to do this in my own strength because there’s no way that I can do that.
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