Moments of Conception 124 - The Drawing Scene from The Peanuts Documentary

October 22, 2014 1:56 PM

All creativity begins with the moment of conception.

That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.

And so, in this blog series, I’m going to be deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons we can learn from the characters.

Today’s clip comes from the drawing scene in The Peanuts Documentary:

What can we learn?

Volume to the power of consistency. The greatest force in the artist’s career is compound
interest. Building our capacity to generate more and more value over time
through the slow, unsexy, but consistent creative increments. It’s a long term,
disciplined strategy, but if we stick to it, the compound interest does most of
the heavy lifting for us. And the result will be more than worth the slog.
Schulz was a master of compound interest. He famously said that the secret of
his success was focusing on drawing one good comic strip every day. Not making
millions. Not achieving fame. Not changing the world. Not advancing his
personal agenda. Not making publishers and newspapers happy. Just the art. Just the work. Just one
good strip, every day. That single goal governed his work for more than fifty
years, and it made him one of the most influential, popular and profitable
cartoonist in the history of the medium. The strip was his mission piece. That
one chunk of art he committed to, focused on and obsessed over, each day, until
it was done, no exceptions; trusting that everything else, including the
television specials, the merchandising, the licensing and the books, would flow
from that. Proof positive, that the best way to beat the odds is with massive
output. That compound interest is what keeps the value growing. How are you incrementally approaching your
creative breakthroughs?

Small times long equals big. Schulz started drawing cartoons when he was a young
boy. But he didn’t go full time as comic creator until he was in his mid
twenties. Meaning, he must have logged tens of thousands of hours putting pen
to paper before he earned a dime. And that’s the part nobody likes to talk
about. Because it represents the pure, unromantic slog of sitting down and
doing the work, every single day. That’s what it all boils down to. Not unlike
the recovering alcoholic who asks himself if he took a drink today, the successful
artist asks himself if he created today. If the answer is yes, and continues to
be yes, then there will be a bright,
green light at the end of that sweaty tunnel. Schulz saw that light. He knew
that his art would take a long time to pay for itself. But he kept cranking out
that strip. And its peak, his comic was syndicated to nearly three thousands
newspapers in seventy counties and twenty languages. He was earning forty
million dollars a year. Even after his death, his brand now generates an
estimate two billion dollars in revenue every year. All because he did the
work. The work that nobody asked him to make. Paid today for the free work he
did yesterday. Are you willing to give
your work away for free until the market is willing to pay for it?

You give me the seed, I’ll cultivate it. Schulz started out in the fifties with a comic strip.
He had no intention of branching out into other media. But when he started created
the animated television programs in the sixties, that new channel gave him the
opportunity to add new dimensions to his work. Additional characters,
personality elements, interesting actions, diverse voice talent, and of course,
the distinctive jazz music. Schulz even said it himself, his animators could
do things with characters that he couldn’t do in the comic strip. And that’s
precisely why the brand became such a colossal success. Schulz was humble
enough to ask for help. To raise his hand when he surpassed the perimeter of
his competence and enlist other people to fill in the gaps. That’s a hard thing
to do. Especially for creators, people who are notoriously independent. People
who hesitate to bring others into their dream, because it represents a loss of
control. But the reality is, we can’t do everything ourselves forever. What we can do, though, is build a vision that infects
people and transfer enthusiasm and inspires them with the purpose behind our work
so they can cultivate the seed we give them. When you’re ready to start stretching other muscles, whom will you
enlist?