Gather Your Party

If you’ve ever thought that achieving a creative goal was a solitary endeavor, you should look at the acknowledgement pages of a book or listen to the acceptance speeches for a prestigious award.  They didn’t achieve their goal alone.

  

Gamers, especially table-top roleplaying gamers, know it’s a good idea to gather their party, to have a diverse group with many skills before setting out on an adventure.  If you’ve ever tried a campaign with just one type of character, you might have noticed how messy that can get.  You need a wizard, a fighter, a thief and a archer.  Or a hacker, a con-man, a martial arts dude and a language specialist.  Or a Jedi, a rogue, a rebel leader and two droids.  Or a captain, an engineer, a science officer and a doctor.  You get the idea. Even “chosen ones” gather a team.  Think of a heist movie.

Get support from your friends, and reach out to make new connections.  Maybe you need a wise advisor, or a fighter.  The cool thing about teams is not only are you getting help, you are giving help.  Sometimes when you give help, you solve your own problem by seeing something from a different perspective.

Imagine if you could make a dream team of anyone, imaginary, historical or real.  Imagining that team rooting for you can be helpful.

My dream team:

• my friends
• the Doctor- a zany, creative, nonviolent problem solver with a time machine
• Captain Janeway- never gives up, never takes crap
• The Librarian- ook
• Lois McMaster Bujold- multiple award winning author
• Dragon- wise, able to eat people, fly and breathe fire
• Jarvis (the A.I.) because helpful self-aware computers are hard to come by
• The Tick- he’s nigh invulnerable and makes rousing speeches
• My future agent- someone who will land me a deal and work with me to improve
• Merlin- we need a wizard.  (I’m thinking T.H. White Sword in the Stone, not that weird kid)
• Minions- to do the boring stuff

What about you?  Put together your team.