The only way to create what you want is... Create it!

A graphic designer was working on a logo for a new company. He had a good understanding of the client's requirements and knew what he wanted in his mind but was struggling with actually putting it on to paper, and creating a tangible logo.

After much research on various words and phrases around the central concept of the new company, he simply drew a blank.

Defeated, he slumped at his desk.

"It's so frustrating!" he exclaimed, "All I want is a logo that looks something like THIS...", and drew a few pencil marks on the page.

Then it hit him.

The logo he'd just drawn, the "something like this", was in fact EXACTLY like what he wanted.

By trying to research the perfect idea, he'd forgotten the simplest way of creating what you want. That is, just create it!

Sometimes in our creative efforts we can try to be too perfect, too detailed, too clever or too accomplished.

Rather than endless planning and analysing, by just starting with our best effort at this point and getting it down on paper, we put ourselves in a great position.

If the idea is very close to what we want, then we need only make a few minor adjustments before we have our finished work.

If it's absolutely nothing like what we want, we can ask why, and look at how it could be made more like what we want.

Either way, by creating this first version, we can move closer to realising what we originally envisioned.

The only true way to fail is to not even begin in the first place...

So how can you apply this to one of your creative projects? Is there an idea or concept that's been floating around incomplete in your head, seemingly elusive and difficult to pin down?

Then pin it down!

Write, sketch, paint, sculpt, or record the first version and see what you feel about it.

Then move closer to your vision, by simply honing this first effort one step at a time...