Days are passing. But you say you wanna write, say you wanna act, say you wanna be a photographer.
The very best aren't born the best. They print that legend, but the truth is they suck at first. But they keep working at it and working at it.
When did you last put words on the page? When did you last pick up your guitar? When did you last get a group together and act?
Expertise is in your hands. Nuance is waiting. Experience is the prize.
Experience and knowledge just kind of show up one day as long as you keep turning up. People ask me for blogging advice. They see me as an expert. Why? Because I show up day after day and write.
Not everything I write is great. But when I nail it I nail it better than I did three years ago.
Bloggers are writers who don't wait around to get hired. The best actors, when not working, are creating their own stuff.
It's hard to do the work, hard to succeed. But experience and knowledge about failure and rejection help too. It's all part of it.
I know this girl who used to absolutely rip my work to pieces. And everyone else's too. She'd have all the reasons why our work was awful. She was a film director too but she'd never made anything. Said she was waiting because she wanted it to be perfect.
Ten years went by. I'm still waiting. It's only her that suffers.
Take your blocks and obstacles and impossibilities and turn them into something. You can be in prison yet still put on a one man show, even if only for yourself. You could be three out of work actors and put on a sketch show in a local school or in the street where you live. I know an actor who is doing one man plays in retirement homes. It's not the dream, but he's learning so much. He has an audience that, on the first sign of boredom, falls asleep (literally).
You learn more about yourself as an actor and person dealing with sleeping audiences than you do in two years of drama school.
You have a talent, a skill, right? I mean-- you have some kind of gift? Don't wait for Spielberg to call or Simon Cowell to spot you. Just get to work honing the unique brilliance of all that is you. It's not about shortcuts, it's not about getting rich quick. It's about creativity. When you focus on it, it breeds longevity. That's what a career is.
People who worry about the paycheck and bitch about how their genius is undiscovered -- these people tend to stop practicing, learning and discovering. Don't let it be you. Explore the infinite abyss!
