“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

-Charles Dickens [A Tale of Two Cities]

“Stay up late, keep your music loud, and make interesting choices.”

-Heather Sellers, my creative writing professor

[ http://heathersellers.com ]

“Tell me and I’ll listen; show me and I’ll understand; involve me and I’ll learn.” -Lakota (Sioux) proverb

“You must always keep changing your process!  Because there are two of you, one who wants to write and one who doesn’t.  The one who wants to write has to keep fooling the one who doesn’t.” -Maria Irene Fornes (playwright)

“To learn, and at due times to practice what one has learned, is that not also a pleasure?  To have friends come from afar, is that not also a joy?  To go unrecognized, yet without being embittered, is that not also to be a noble person?”

“To learn without thinking is unavailing; to think without learning is dangerous.”

-Confucius

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me … is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

-Ira Glass

^I don’t really know who this guy is, but his name is cool.  And this is an interesting point.  I find a lot of relevance in it – for my writing, my photography, my artwork [for my graphic novels class].  I agonize over everything and go in circles about how to make my work be great, to make it something of which I’m really super proud.  But I don’t know that I’ve ever had a piece of any kind of work turn out beyond “pretty well” or make me feel more than “pretty good” about it.   You know how you read or see other people’s work and you just go, “Wow“… I don’t feel like I’ve ever come up with anything worthy of such a reaction.  And who doesn’t want that, right?

I’m not claiming to have impeccable taste or blaming my unhappiness with my work on said taste.  My point is that agonizing over every piece only to be disappointed/frustrated can often lead to being afraid to even try – for me, at least.  But giving up is infinitely worse than cranking out a bunch of “crappy” work…because how will you ever get anywhere if you don’t even try?

I think it’s easy to look at a masterpiece – whether it’s an amazing book, a breathtaking photograph, whatever – and assume that the artist was able to produce it without thinking, without effort.  But authors don’t just sit down and automatically write a best-selling book in one draft.  Photographers don’t create beautiful images by mindlessly clicking the shutter.

The bottom line here?  Practice makes perfect.

Well, maybe not perfect.  But better, anyway.