Don’t you just love that old saying “when the student is ready, the teacher appears”? It used to frustrate me a little, as I really hadn’t experienced much evidence of this in my own life. I felt for a long time as though I had to do everything the hard way, under my own steam, and had to make some heavy-duty sacrifices along the way.
I felt I was ready, but the teacher was a no-show.
Little did I know, that as Ram Dass says, when you know how to listen, everyone is a teacher.
This is going to be a continuing theme for me over the course of writing this blog because when you’re talking about creativity, it’s really important to have teachers. I tell people all the time to go have lessons in their chosen artistic area. The desire to create is the seed of great art, not the God-given ability to draw like Michelangelo. I mean, Michelangelo had lessons! Loads of them!
Natural inborn talent is a bonus, the icing on the creative cake but how will you know the depth of your potential without fully exploring it, and taking lessons is a great way to do this. Start with some tutorials on Youtube. There are some fantastic ones for any artistic area from Lace-making to metal-work!
Doing lessons is also a great way of racking up the miles, artistically speaking. The great independent film-maker Robert Rodriguez urges us all to make as many mistakes as possible. To make a great movie, you really need to make 17 terrible ones, he says. You gotta do the work!
Turning up at the page, or canvas or workbench day in day out, grabbing time where we can if we have a day-job, or putting on our big-girl pants and getting shit done if we have managed to ‘turn pro’. I’m using this term as it sounds better than ‘unemployed’.
It’s dead-set the hardest thing but it’s also the ONLY THING that’s going to get us where we want to go.
I’ve been listening to a podcast with actor/producer/ creative/all-round good guy Arian Moayed and he backs this 100%. Actually, I think you’d 
be hard-pressed to find any successful person in movies, art, medicine, anything! who doesn’t subscribe to this opinion? NO ONE IS GOING TO DO IT FOR US! We have to be our own mentor, our own apprentice, and our own cheer-squad sometimes. Everything else is a bonus.
Moayed has a production company that receives scripts non-stop from new writers. If they like the script, they have a standard response that they send back urging the writer to create the thing, then get back to them. Get a group of actors, a venue, make it happen. Make an impact. Do what you can do, then do it again, over and over, get better and learn. The evidence is 
overwhelming that if we follow this advice, to keep learning, doing growing, we will achieve our dream. Do what Banksy says; If you get tired, learn to rest, not quit.
On quitting, I was talking to a buddy yesterday about the fact that I am not painting and I’ve been thinking about that…I didn’t quit painting, I prefer to say that I decided to focus my attention on writing!
Then later this afternoon I realised my first love in the arts was acting! Now I did quit acting because I believed I wasn’t attractive enough to make it as an actor. It’s the same reason I didn’t pursue singing, even though people urge me to go on The Voice or whatever. The absolute LAST thing I want is to be called the next Susan Boyle! I’ll keep singing in the shower!
My personal challenge this week is to get my marketing up to scratch! I’m launching my Patreon, still editing and formatting Hotel Deja Vu, editing my first novella in the Paris in a Day series and planning to participate in the Flash Fiction challenge with NYC Midnight (with a story about a future where we no longer eat animals…or gamble on them… working title Off to the Races) 😉
I’m thinking of giving Camp Nanowrimo a miss for July but plan to do November. Having just written that, I write about 2K words a day anyway, so I might as well do Camp!
Quote of the Day
“Only go and see Jurassic World if you want to see dinosaurs f*cking people up ~ Calvin Betts (Yes, this is my son…)
nah, here’s the real one…
THE FEAR NEVER LEAVES, YOU JUST KEEP DOING THE WORK: ARIAN MOAYED
Today’s podcast – The Good Life Project with Arian Moayed.
What else am I thinking about… working on becoming a vibrational match for my desires… here’s an interesting article on the subject.
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