I saw a speech last week where I was told not to make any more crap. “There is already too much crap in the world,” the speaker said. “Don’t make more crap.” And ever since I heard that, I’ve been worried that all I’m making is more crap.

I do a lot of creating — I’ve set my life up that way. I create things for myself, I create things for other people, I create some things for my own edification, and some I create for my friends, or just because I promised to. When I talked to Bruce Campbell as a DJ on my college radio station, I asked him why he’d acted in From Dusk Til Dawn 2. That movie was terrible, I told him, and you were only in it for the first three minutes before you died along with Tiffany Amber Theissen! I rented it specifically because you were in it, and I got ripped off! Campbell just laughed at me. The director, Scott Spiegel, was an old friend of his from back in the Evil Dead days, and he’d done the cameo as a favor. “Some parts you do for money,” said Bruce, “some you do for the art, and some you do for a friend.”

Does From Dusk Til Dawn 2 count as crap then?

In some respects, I feel like I’m doing the best work I’ve ever done. Some of the things I’m writing lately are not only more important personally to me than anything else I’ve written, but they’re also being seen by more people than ever before. Some of the things I’m writing because I feel they need to be said — I’m living and breathing those things, and I’m seeking out feedback after they’re published, trying to learn as much as I can from them. And some things I’m writing because they just need to be written, both because I’m paid to write them and because it’s just part of the day-to-day. I wouldn’t say I’m not putting effort into them — I am. I try to put some truth into everything I write, just because of all of the things I know about, that’s the one solid thing that everyone, from all walks of life, seems to be interested in. Even if I’m writing about a funny sticker or a little plushy toy, if I can get some truth in there, the thing works.

But at the same time, I also feel like I’m creating more than I ever have, and that means that some of it has to be better than the rest of it. I recently started taking an improv class, and it’s been fascinating, both in terms of learning how to fabricate coherent characters and story live on stage with a group mind, and just in terms of my own progression. I originally planned to just take a fun class, and now I’m three classes in, have joined an actual group, and am facing down the possibility of actually performing comedy on stage as much as every single week.

The problem is, I think it’s crap. Part of the issue is experience — I’ve been watching a lot of improv comedy (you’re mandated to by the classes anyway), and the stuff I’ve been watching is being performed by people who have done it for years and years, sometimes even with the same people the whole time. I’m three months in, and it’s probably ludicrous to compare what they can do to what I can do. I’ve barely ever been on stage (we’ll leave aside a few school plays and one extremely short run of attempts at standup comedy), and it’s silly for me to look at them and the hilarious and exquisite things they can create, and compare that to my lumpy, inadequate clod of an improv scene.

But of course I compare them anyway. And of course I come up lacking. And I worry that the very effort of creating these scenes is just pushing more crap into the world. Who am I to try and tackle anything outside my chosen profession of writing, anyway? If I want to write so much, why not just stick with that? Surely I should concentrate on what I think I can, maybe, one day, do beautifully, and leave the rest of the world to those better at it.

Of course I know that’s not true, either. No one spins gold on the first try. And even when Bruce Campbell was doing a part for money, or subbing in a cameo for his friend, he was still doing something that he really wanted to do anyway. If you want to create, then you have to, whether it’s crap, or brilliant, or otherwise.

The best you can hope, I guess, is that what you create doesn’t finish its life as crap. It can start that way — sometimes, when you need to create, you just do, and whatever happens, happens. But I guess as a creator, the best you can do is to go back and do it again, make it better, and hope that whatever you’ve made turns out, someday, to not be crap.