Show Your Work
the Scarlet Letters has notes on making art:
- "Get through your first 50 failures as fast as you can." I don't think that we should be shooting for a place where we no longer make crappy art. A good artist is one who's in motion making lots of art -- you only think they're so much better because they produce so much quantity that their pile of "good art" has also been able to accumulate. For every piece of crap you create, you're one step closer to getting something you really like.
- Work fast. Creativity is exciting. If you're not judging while you're making, then you can just throw things together as fast as your mind can move. You're smart; if you don't like what you've made, you'll know immediately. You might not know what to do about the problem you perceive... Don't "think", standing there cogitating -- try things. If your hands are in motion, you can be generating new permutations. The one that you want to pick will come out on its own time.
- Let your level show. Let the world know that despite having years of investment in your art form, you're still a beginner who doesn't know it all. Rather than hide your thought process, let your questions be present in your work. You are a fundamentally more interesting artist if people get to see what it is that you're struggling with, rather than just your final answers. Show your work. Talk about what you still can't understand (unapologetically).
...via 43 Folders
Comments
I'm equal parts repulsed and fascinated by the second item - repulsed because that's not how I work, and I hate those "this is how you should create" suggestions.
But on the other hand, it might be fun to experiment with that.
Posted by: chance | October 13, 2005 02:50 PM
:-) I was going to add an...I don't agree with these all or all parts...but I was lazy, me.
I am a much better writer when I write very fast. It's scary in fact, but I tend to think that all that time I'm hating myself for not writing at all is really subconscious process time that makes the writing fast part actually work.
I love 'get through your 50 failures as fast as you can'. Although I'm not sure it actually works that way.
Posted by: debco | October 13, 2005 05:36 PM
I agree with chance. Not everyone works the same way and "this is how you should write" declarations need a lot of grains of salt. Number two seems to me to be great advice for someone who feels blocked or who can't get past the "this sucks why am I bothering" syndrome, or that lockup that happens when the critic on your shoulder won't be quiet. It conveys the exhilaration of working fast and free. The NaNoWriMo approach, I guess.
Number one I disagree with, because I've seen prolific writers fail to improve because they just write lots and lots and lots and never think about what they've done, and I've seen glacially slow writers produce very small amounts of very high quality work. It's a YMMV thing. Some people are Gustave Flaubert, some people are Laurence Sterne.
Number three is a suggestion I haven't seen before. Interesting.
I think you're right about the subconscious processing time. It's true for me, anyway. :)
Posted by: TMcG | October 13, 2005 11:27 PM