Ignore Everybody - MacLeod, Hugh [16]
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.
Conversely, neither should you fret too much about “writer’s block,” “artist’s block,” or whatever. If you’re looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing comes to you, then go do something else. Writer’s 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.
Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough. In the meantime, you’re better off going out into the big, wide world, having some adventures and refilling your well. Trying to create when you don’t feel like it is like making conversation for the sake of making conversation. It’s not really connecting, it’s just droning on like an old, drunken barfly.
26. You have to find your own shtick.
A Picasso always looks like Picasso painted it. Hemingway always sounds like Hemingway.
A Beethoven symphony always sounds like a Beethoven symphony. Part of being a master is learning how to sing in nobody else’s voice but your own.
EVERY ARTIST IS LOOKING FOR THEIR BIG, definitive “Ah-Ha!” moment, whether they’re a master or not.
That moment where they finally find their true voice, once and for all.
For me, it was when I discovered drawing on the backs of business cards.
Other, more famous, and far more notable examples would be Jackson Pollock discovering splatter paint. Or Robert Ryman discovering all-white canvases. Andy Warhol discovering silk-screen. Hunter S. Thompson discovering gonzo journalism. Duchamp discovering the found object. Jasper Johns discovering the American flag. Hemingway discovering brevity. James Joyce discovering stream-of-consciousness prose.
Was it luck? Perhaps a little bit.
But it wasn’t the format that made the art great. It was the fact that somehow while playing around with something new, suddenly they found they were able to put their entire selves into it.
Only then did it become their “shtick,” their true voice, etc.
That’s what people responded to. The humanity, not the form. The voice, not the form.
Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won’t. It’s that simple.
27. Write from the heart.
There is no silver bullet. There is only the love God gave you.
AS A PROFESSIONAL WRITER, I AM INTERESTED in how conversation scales.
How communication scales, x to the power of n, etc. etc.
Ideally, if you’re in the communication business, you want to say the same thing, the same way, to an audience of millions that you would to an audience of one. Imagine the power you’d have if you could pull it off.
But sadly, it doesn’t work that way.
You can’t love a crowd the same way you can love a person.
And a crowd can’t love you the way a single person can love you.
Intimacy doesn’t scale. Not really. Intimacy is a one-on-one phenomenon.
It’s not a big deal. Whether you’re writing to an audience of one, five, a thousand, a million, ten million, there’s really only one way to truly connect. One way that actually works:
Write from the heart.
There is no silver bullet. There is only the love God gave you.
28. The best way to get approval is not to need it.
This is equally true in art and business. And love. And sex. And just about everything else worth having.
ABOUT TWENTY YEARS AGO I WAS HANGING out in the offices of Punch, the famous London humor magazine. I was just a kid at the time, but for some reason the cartoon editor (who was a famous cartoonist in his own right) was tolerating having me around that day.
I was asking him questions about the biz. He was answering them as best he could while he sorted through a large stack of