“Yes, and…” you may know, is the foundational principle upon which improvisation is built. (If you don’t, please see last week’s essay before proceeding.)

When two people are on stage, and one says “It’s really hot out here in the desert,” it is their scene partner’s duty to agree, then build upon the sentiment. If the partner instead says, “No, we’re in a submarine!” the process halts, the audience is lost and the scene is dead in the water. Agree, and add to it: yes, and. Simple as it is, this sentiment sums up much of what being an artist is all about. Building, not tearing down. Openness to new ideas, no matter how illogical. Acceptance, affirmation, addition.

Whatever the opposite of “Yes, and” is, it’s on frequent display on social media. The comments under any post, no matter how mundane, are filled with discussion killing, migraine-inducing contradictory comments that often begin, “Well, actually…” You’ll note how such comments are often the turd in the metaphorical punchbowl, absolutely derailing conversation, ensuring nobody ever arrives anywhere helpful, productive or even remotely interesting. This highlights, I believe, a general closed-mindedness that is spiritually opposed to “Yes, and.” See how it kneecaps the creative spark? Hijacks any further pursuit of common interest? It sets the participants at odds, stifling whatever magical garden may have grown there. Next time you’re on social media, keep an eye out for the comments that affirm and add to the discussion versus those that derail it.

In my own work, whether writing or photography, I frequently put this openness into practice by seeking juxtaposition (the correlation of two unrelated elements) in hopes of surprising and delighting myself. If I have an idea, a jolt of inspiration, it is not my obligation to critique it, to edit it, to vet it for factual accuracy. All of this kills the vibe, arrests the momentum before it’s begun. It quashes the possibility of building… anything! Later we can critique it and shape it and decide if it’s any good. For now, our only job is to build it, to build something.

There’s a reason writing and editing are two different jobs, deployed at different stages of the process, often by different people.

“Yes, and” thinking has taught me to follow my foot and trust inspiration enough to see where it takes me, even when it doesn’t make any sense. It might take me to a place where I make something out of nothing. Grab ahold — of whatever! — and start heading down a path. See where it leads. Wherever it goes, I probably haven’t been there before. Maybe I’ll love it, maybe I won’t. But I’ll never know if I don’t go see.

Maybe this all reads as too touchy-feely, or too broad to be broadly useful. Or maybe you just think, “Well, duh!” But for me, this revelation has been invaluable. I spent decades dreaming and planning and imagining, thinking I had to do things “the right way.” Then one day I woke up and I was 40. And then I blinked and I was 50. Jeebus, I thought, I’d better get busy.

So I followed my foot. Now I have a thriving Substack (creatively thriving, if not financially) and an even fuller life. I’ve never felt more creatively, artistically fulfilled. I feel as if everything I touch turns to gold. Not because it’s amazing, but simply because it exists. I made this. I sat on the porch on a beautiful afternoon and wrote this very sentence out of thin air, for no reason other than I followed my foot. And now it exists in the world, rather than as some vague plan in the back of my head, remaining fully nothing along with all the other nothing that exists in there.

See that sentence? Practically nonsense. But also sort of perfect, right? I trusted it, went with it, and now I love it. Because it’s weird and wonderful to me. That’s the other thing working this way does: it helps you embrace your voice, to be yourself. That’s something nobody else can achieve. They might get close, they can bite your style, but if they want to be something great, chances are they’d get there more reliably by embracing the most unique aspects of themselves. Be yourself, let your you-ness through. It’ll resonate with whatever audience it was meant to.1

That’s not to suggest abdicating all editorial responsibility, or that we stop trying to make things of quality. For someone like me, “Yes, and” simply means I worry mostly about the doing before I worry about the improving. The other way around, nothing gets done but boy are my secret ideas refined.

On his outstanding podcast “Good One,” Jesse David Fox interviews comedians about jokes. In a recent discussion about storytelling and the magic of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” Fox says part of what makes that show great is its messy energy. Yes, the show is scripted, but its essence is close to improvisation. Things are written quickly, in the days and hours before the show goes live to a worldwide audience. We see the actors reading their lines, in bad wigs and holding silly props. It’s all a bit chaotic, which absolutely adds to the charm.

“If it was better,” Fox says, “it would be worse.”

What an amazing sentence, representing an even more amazing idea. This is the power behind “Yes, and.” My goal is not to make messy work, but to make something great. Imperfectly, humanly great. And sometimes, messiness is integral to that. I’ll take delightfully messy over perfect and inconsequential any day.

“If everyone was nailing their beats it would be unwatchable,” Fox continues. “Especially as all the internet is AI content, the fact that there’s a show where people mess up on live television is legitimately thrilling.”

You can’t reliably plan your way to thrilling — well, I can’t, anyway. The big budget Hollywood approach certainly works, but it’s infinitely more expensive and time consuming, and legitimately unattainable to most of us. What we can do, however, is get started making something great right now. Why not just do it? Can’t that be enough? Isn’t the atomic habit approach to becoming a great writer inevitably going to start with writing a single sentence?

One of the things I’ve learned from writing this Substack is you can’t predict how an audience will respond to anything you create. What you think is wonderful — something you’ve meticulously crafted over days and weeks, refined to within an inch of its life, unassailable both philosophically and technically — may be met with a collective “meh.” The audience shrugs it into the dustbin of history.2

By the same token, when it’s late at night and you’ve got a 6am deadline, few words on a page and even fewer good ideas, you follow your fingers and get to typing. Next thing you know you’ve got 800 words of barely cohesive thought you’re sure will cause a cascade of nasty letters. You click “Publish” through gritted teeth, immediately filled with regret. You manage to fall asleep and, after a few fitful hours, wake up ready for the inevitable backlash.

But what’s this? Your audience has doubled overnight and you’re touted as the next Hemingway? “A genius among men,” new readers shout! Subscriptions spike. The piece is shared far and wide. You’re interviewed on a morning show, asked about the genius essay that, you’re embarrassed to mention, slipped from your brain like a stifled belch. Met not with revulsion but universal acclaim. Dear god, what is happening? How did we get here?

Who knows how we got here. But it happened, at least partly, because we let it. In the immortal words of 38 Special, “Hold on loosely, but don’t let go.”

When your approach boils down to “just do it,” you learn to avoid overthinking. Put pen to paper and get started. Follow your foot. When you have an idea, any idea, see where it leads. Greet it with a technique that reliably works for, well, almost anything. Accept it and add to it. In other words, “Yes, and…”

That’s all for now with respect to “Yes, and…” but do stay tuned
for more exploration of my favorite little concept in future essays.
If you enjoyed it, or found a shred of helpful information, I hope you’ll share it.