Don’t play the creative lottery
Success isn’t an end point, it’s enjoying the grind. You’ve heard me say this before. You’ve probably heard your favourite guru say it. But it’s never an easy pill to swallow, this idea that you should be loving the rough bits.
I’m not sure you have to love it, but you definitely have to commit to it, and to accept it as the only path. When you’re trying to ‘make it’, you will have a hard time. It’s not an occasional side effect or a sign you’re failing, it’s the whole thing. It’s the pain of muscles growing, and a sign that you are reaching out of the crowd and into stratospheric levels of competition. It will always hurt, because worthwhile things always have a price.
The hidden graft
Christopher McQuarrie “is an acclaimed producer, director and an Academy Award® winning writer”. His credit roll includes The Usual Suspects, Mission Impossible and The Mummy. You might imagine the guy would be resting on his laurels a bit by this point.
But then he comes out with this Twitter thread:
Across a couple of dozen tweets, Christopher’s advice to budding film-makers is to keep making, and to keep in mind that it’s a slog for everyone. It’s a slog for beginners, it’s a slog for you, but it’s a slog for your world-famous idols, too. There is no point at which we can reasonably expect it not be a big, painful, boring, angst-ridden and often quite unsatisfying, slog.
You can send out your script (or novel, or whatever) and hope someone is struck down by your bolt of genius – but hope won’t make you any better at what you do.
Playing the lottery makes a lot of people poorer before it makes one person wealthy.
If you’re a writer, you must keep writing! If you really want to give yourself a chance, practice your craft! Don’t hand over your fate, or even your mood for the day, to some stranger. Keep working on it until they come to you; there is no other sensible option.
It’s particularly deceptive in these glamorous industries where every effort is made to stop it looking like work.
I’ve worked with professional dancers — perhaps the closest thing we have to superheroes. When you see them on stage or in film they seem to have mastered the art of flying, and it’s reasonable to assume that once you can fly, there’s no going back. But dancers know that flying only works if you keep flapping your wings. They have to get in the studio and practice flying again every day, or they won’t be able to do it anymore.
Sharing helps
Hiding the graft is one thing, but hiding the actual work you’re doing? That’s just crazy. Regularly sending your creations out into the world — even just showing them to a friend — will help you hone your craft, build your confidence and reputation and spark ideas in myriad ways that hiding it in a drawer will not.
Sharing also helps you to work out who you are. Consciously or otherwise, you’ll collect a fresh perspective on your work, and therefore yourself, every time you put it in front of someone. We make, we share, we work out what we like, which bit of us work best with others, and eventually what we’d like to do more of.
Today’s challenge
It takes a bit of getting used to, so try one or more of these tips for getting in the sharing habit:
- Share something that’s not finished yet
- Share something that you know is flawed
- Share something every day for a week
- Share something today, then tomorrow share an improved version of it
For more posts like this and to find out more about the HC Masterclass series, please visit hcmasterclass.com
