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Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most. —Fyodor Dostoyevski
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently. —Agnes de Mille
Imagination is more important than knowledge. —Albert Einstein
Artistic loss is inevitable, Cameron says. The poem is not accepted for publication, the book doesn't sell, the injury means sitting out of a series of dance performances, the criticism makes sense but not in a way that leads to improvement of the artwork. Artistic loss, moreover, is painful, is itself an injury, and like any injury must be properly treated in order not to scar over. It hurts too much, it's silly to cry over such a thing, it's embarrassing that it happened in the first place. And so we do not share the loss, we do not treat the injury, and the scar that forms there blocks our artistic growth.
Cameron discusses academia in relation to creativity. In short, there isn't much relation. "To be blunt, most academics know how to take something apart, but not how to assemble it." Even in those courses that try to teach creativity, she says, student work is viewed in terms of where it goes wrong rather than where it goes right. Artists, as she's been saying all book, need encouragement, not discouragement. Even, especially, from ourselves.
"Gain disguised as loss" is important, Cameron says. "Every end is a beginning", we know, but often we forget because the ending is so painful. But the beginning is the important part. "How can this loss serve me?" Cameron suggests we ask. "Where does it point my work?" Cameron describes her own filmmaking career: the first film of hers that was actually filmed, of many scripts that she created, is one she filmed herself independently, after a series of disappointments with the studios. "What next?" instead of "Why me?", she says she asked, and we should ask.
"Do you know how old I'll be by the time I learn to play the piano?" "The same age you will be if you don't." A lot of artists deny themselves the chance at learning something new because they say "I'm too old". Cameron calls this, like "I don't have enough money", a "Great Block Lie", designed specifically to prevent us from doing the new thing. "I'm too young" is another such. Cameron emphasizes that creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless. And those Great Block Lies all boil down to the simple fact that we're afraid. But the first step is always scary, and we can't take a second step without taking the first.
Cameron's next section is on "filling the form". This means, she says, taking the next small step instead of leaping ahead to the next big step. To sell a novel, write a novel. To write a novel, think of an idea and write a page at a time until it's done. "Filling the form" means writing that page a day. Or if you're not a writer, washing out your paintbrushes, practicing a recitation in front of a mirror, sketching a small scene. There is always one small creative thing that you can do every day. Do it. Don't fret about how you'll have to move to Hollywood if the script sells: aside from being untrue, how can it sell when you're too busy worrying about moving to write it? We see the forest and not the trees, the big picture and not the brushstrokes.
Don't forget to go on a date with your artist sometime this week and do your morning pages every day!
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently. —Agnes de Mille
Imagination is more important than knowledge. —Albert Einstein
Artistic loss is inevitable, Cameron says. The poem is not accepted for publication, the book doesn't sell, the injury means sitting out of a series of dance performances, the criticism makes sense but not in a way that leads to improvement of the artwork. Artistic loss, moreover, is painful, is itself an injury, and like any injury must be properly treated in order not to scar over. It hurts too much, it's silly to cry over such a thing, it's embarrassing that it happened in the first place. And so we do not share the loss, we do not treat the injury, and the scar that forms there blocks our artistic growth.
Cameron discusses academia in relation to creativity. In short, there isn't much relation. "To be blunt, most academics know how to take something apart, but not how to assemble it." Even in those courses that try to teach creativity, she says, student work is viewed in terms of where it goes wrong rather than where it goes right. Artists, as she's been saying all book, need encouragement, not discouragement. Even, especially, from ourselves.
"Gain disguised as loss" is important, Cameron says. "Every end is a beginning", we know, but often we forget because the ending is so painful. But the beginning is the important part. "How can this loss serve me?" Cameron suggests we ask. "Where does it point my work?" Cameron describes her own filmmaking career: the first film of hers that was actually filmed, of many scripts that she created, is one she filmed herself independently, after a series of disappointments with the studios. "What next?" instead of "Why me?", she says she asked, and we should ask.
"Do you know how old I'll be by the time I learn to play the piano?" "The same age you will be if you don't." A lot of artists deny themselves the chance at learning something new because they say "I'm too old". Cameron calls this, like "I don't have enough money", a "Great Block Lie", designed specifically to prevent us from doing the new thing. "I'm too young" is another such. Cameron emphasizes that creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless. And those Great Block Lies all boil down to the simple fact that we're afraid. But the first step is always scary, and we can't take a second step without taking the first.
Cameron's next section is on "filling the form". This means, she says, taking the next small step instead of leaping ahead to the next big step. To sell a novel, write a novel. To write a novel, think of an idea and write a page at a time until it's done. "Filling the form" means writing that page a day. Or if you're not a writer, washing out your paintbrushes, practicing a recitation in front of a mirror, sketching a small scene. There is always one small creative thing that you can do every day. Do it. Don't fret about how you'll have to move to Hollywood if the script sells: aside from being untrue, how can it sell when you're too busy worrying about moving to write it? We see the forest and not the trees, the big picture and not the brushstrokes.
Don't forget to go on a date with your artist sometime this week and do your morning pages every day!
no subject
Date: 2013-11-24 06:17 pm (UTC)From:"The same age you will be if you don't."
I've always liked that quote. :-)
no subject
Date: 2013-11-26 05:19 am (UTC)From:I find I'm quite fond of it myself...though notice I'm still not learning to play the electronic keyboard I bought...