The Price Of Creating Something New

I’ve been thinking about the whole Wicked phenomenon, especially with the new movie. People miss what actually made the original novel and musical so powerful. It wasn’t just “What if the Wicked Witch wasn’t that bad.” It wasn’t some soft attempt to say evil people are just misunderstood. Gregory Maguire didn’t write an apology for villains.

He wrote a completely new story. A total inversion built from the raw materials of Oz.

He didn’t claim the original Wizard of Oz got it wrong. He took its characters, its world, its assumptions, and he reimagined them to provoke different questions. What if these same pieces, rearranged, revealed something new about power, society, and sacrifice? What if looking at familiar elements from a different angle made you see the whole thing differently?

That is what made Wicked explode. It didn’t correct the old story. It created a new one that made you think.

And here’s the part a lot of people miss. Plenty of people could do this. Plenty of people have the imagination, the insight, the creativity to completely rewrite a story or reinvent a system. YOU can do this. What I have found that people lack…is the courage to put it out there. Because when you rework something beloved, when you take an old frame and build a new narrative, you invite criticism. You get people who say, “You didn’t follow the original.” “You changed too much.” “You messed with a classic.” That is exactly what is happening with the new Wicked movies. They refuse to slavishly follow the old plot, and some people can’t handle that.

But that is the price of creating something new. And high achievers are willing to pay it.

They take the criticism. They take the heat. They take the pushback. And they still put their work into the world. Just like Gregory Maguire. Just like Ariana Grande. Just like Cynthia Erivo. They are the ones who get remembered because they are the ones who actually executed, actually shipped, actually dared.

Sometimes the breakthrough is not doing the old story better. Sometimes the breakthrough is having the courage to create a new story entirely.