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