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Earlier this week I started down a path of reading up on how to improve my writing/blogging, and I have been READING. Nothing else has gotten accomplished, well I drew a doll pattern.....
One of the things I have read is How To Be CREATIVE by Huge Macleod of gapingvoid
I am going to share some of my favorite quotes from this great bit of inspiration.
"The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you."
"Plus, a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they donʼt want you to
change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They like things the way
they are, thatʼs how they love you—the way you are, not the way you may become."
Change is hard, but it is part of life, we all grow and change, it is just that CHANGE. I have been paying attention to some social developments going on close to me, and have been musing over how human interactions between parents and their children change as the child grows up into an adult hood. Some aspects of growing up the parent relishes and encourages (like potty training!) and others the parent may not be wanting to let of of just yet, fearing the change that will happen. We can't keep our children babies forever, nor would we want to.
Original idea, my idea isn't that original, but those I talk to most often have no clue what I REALLY want to do, it is outside their interest field, I have come to acknowledge this and accept it, so I don't often ask for their advice. In the end, I think only YOU should be making your decisions, and if you need to get out the old Pro/Con list, then do so.
"Your idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours
alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing."
If you are trying to fit yourself into the confines of any group, art-form, business or any other "box" you are cheating yourself, limiting your abilities to create something truly masterful!
"Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina."
SERIOUSLY! My mother always told me, "If you are going to do something, Do it Right the FIRST TIME!" Not to say you aren't going to make mistakes, after all we all learn from mistakes, and some mistakes, are in fact, in the end, not a mistake at all but a new discovery!
If you just glue some stuff together, it may look like something to someone, but the odds are it will just look like random stuff glued together to most people (including yourself) and if you don't value your work, why should anyone else?
"the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy."
But it isn't easy, we all know that. Just a look at some of the most influential pieces of modern art like this piece by Piet Mondrian
Looks Simple right? Like any Kindergartner could have done it, so why is it considered an influential piece of art? For the answer you will have to learn more about art than I could teach you, not having an art class since High School! but I can tell you that there are important principles behind this work, which is why it is iconic.
"Nobody can tell you if what youʼre doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the lonelier it is."
Just think of Van Gogh for this one. He was compelled to paint, and those around him didn't see the value in his work until after he was dead. And I will not go on and on about how great the Doctor Who Episode Vincent and the Doctor is, all my fellow creative Whovians already know.
The point is, you are NOT going to gather a bunch of 'yes men" who applaud your every work overnight, nor would you want to!
You need to find yourself, and then be true to yourself, be true to your art, don't sell out, don't change something just because someone else wants you to. (Now, of course, if you had some niggling detail that wasn't right, but you could pin point it, and asked for opinions, someone else might be able to point out that detail to you)
"Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, “Iʼd like my crayons back, please.”"
"The wee voice didn't show up because it decided you need more money or you need to hang out with movie stars. Your wee voice came back because your soul somehow depends on it. Thereʼs something you havenʼt said, something you havenʼt done, some light that needs to be switched on, and it needs to be taken care of. Now."
So you have to listen to the wee voice or it will die…taking a big chunk of you along with it."
I hear this one from my husband often, but then he NEVER goes anywhere where without a sketchbook. He feels that school didn't teach him what he needed to know, and now that we have children in school, he is trying to prevent that happening to our children by exposing them to things that they show interest in (like algebra, at kindergarten age!)
What did you want to do as a child, chances that it changed more than once, does it still appeal to you? why aren't you doing it?
"Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you donʼt make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.
“Admit that your own private Mount Everest exists. That is half the battle.”"
As Yoda said "Do or Do Not, there is no try"
Another good quote is "the only stupid question, is the one unasked." Now all my husband's questions are "stupid questions" he says so just before he asks them, and I tease him about it lovingly.
If you never try, you will never know what you can do, what you can accomplish
"“The first rule of business,” he said, chuckling at my naiveté, “is never sell something you
love. Otherwise, you may as well be selling your children.”"
"The most important thing a creative person can learn, professionally, is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not. It is this red line that demarcates your sovereignty, that defines your own private creative domain. What shit you are willing to take, and what shit youʼre not. What you are willing to relinquish control over, and what you arenʼt. What price you are willing to pay, and what price you arenʼt. Everybody is different; everybody has his or her own red line."
Ohh Tough choices here, are you in ART or BUSINESS?
For me, I know a few things about myself
- I hate doing mass production. I may make multiples of the same thing, but they will all have differences, even if it is just a different color. I had a job sewing on an assembly line once, it killed my desire to sew at home, and it aggravated my bad hip.
- I am not the best seamstress. My actual clothing construction skills could really use some sharpening, and I know where to learn more, just not focusing on that because...
- I do not want to do sewing for a living. There I said it, and you may be surprised to read that, but I am not interested in taking commissions and working to someone else ideals.
- I want to design, to create, to take pencil and paper in hand and make something, I'll sew up that pattern to test it out, and then I'll likely never make it again. I have decent math skills and tools at my disposal to creat patterns, so that is what I am going to do.
Inspiration precedes the desire to create, not the other way around.
You have to find a way of working that makes it dead easy to take full advantage of your inspired moments. They never hit at a convenient time, nor do they last long.
Writerʼs block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you SHOULD feel the need to say something."
The muse comes in spurts (so does depression it seems) I know this from my personal life, sometimes you are blocked creatively because there is another aspect of your life that is out of balance. I have just recently experienced this in my personal life, I feel that some of the non-creative problems have been dealt with and am glad to have my creative mood coming back.
DO SOMETHING ELSE the muse will come back, or if there is another problem, deal with that.
So there you have it, just a FEW quotes from How To Be CREATIVE by Huge Macleodthat I found to be inspirational for me. i would highly recomend going over to ChangeThis and downloading How To Be CREATIVE for FREE, print it out, mark it up with highlighter and notes in the margins. Put it in a binder and read through it again when you have the need, I know that is what I have done, and will do.
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