I think one of life’s underrated pleasures is to be driven around. To be taken somewhere without having to actively engage in the process of getting there. Being in the back seat of a car for a few hours is bliss to me. I know it sounds like a weird/lazy/selfish thing to say and I probably wouldn’t say it if it was a more regular occurrence, but I think there’s something to it. Was the case when I was a kid being driven to some relative’s house outside of the city, still is the case now.
Just sitting on a moderately comfortable seat with the heat on during a cold day is nice. Listening to whatever music is playing on the radio, the conversations being had by the others in the car. Being allowed to drift off at sixty miles an hour to the best sleep you’ll get without guilt of wasting time or the impending alarm to wake you up. Watching the white lines on the pavement, the miles of nothing around you, the lights passing by. Letting the mind wander, knowing there’s nowhere else to go.
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Let’s be real here; is there anything more selfish than directing a movie? I don’t mean that as a bad thing, but it crosses my mind every so often. You have to think highly enough of yourself to take something you wrote and get a bunch of people to spend their time to create a physical representation of whatever leaked out of that head. You cut it together and then expect random strangers stop what they’re doing and take notice of your work? Is that egotistical or is that just me?
Of course that’s just the other side of the coin, the egotistical tails to the starving artist heads. Creating for the sake of creating. If someone digs what you’re doing, great. If not, then no big deal. Just move on to the next piece and make more. The pleasure is derived from the process instead of the final product, the result just happens to exist. The result is merely the justification for doing it in the first place.
My problem is that whenever I put down the pen and close the book on a few freshly inked pages, I inevitably pick up that coin and give it a few spins. I suppose it shouldn’t matter what side it lies on, but I find it hard to forge ahead when it lands on the wrong one. Whatever I deem to be the wrong one. Most of the time I can’t even tell if it’s one or the other. Maybe it’s all one and the same.
I’ve been flipping tails more than heads lately. No choice but to try again.
Quote reblogged from NPR Fresh Air with 13,676 notes
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. 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, 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 its 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.
