As someone teaching at art school and who worked and works as a freelancer in all kind of creative professions (VFX, graphic design, programming, sounddesign) I think the best advice you can give to anyone in any creative profession is:
Learn to switch hats. When you have your writing hat on, put your critic hat, your editor hat, your publisher hat, etc. down. Make space for the other hats in times when you don't feel like writing. Same is useful for music, film, painting, design, art.
The thing is: it is really easier said than done. Most people constantly worry about other domains when they work on their things. Sure, let some ideas of how you want your work to be published flow into your writing, but don't worry about it. You can still worry later when you read the text again with a different hat. Or you could have worried about that before you started writing. Worry about writing, about which phrase to use to convey what, worry about where you want your text to develope and how fast.
The mastery of this type of very conscious context switching is hard, because nobody is going to tell you which hat you need to wear when and for how long. Nobody will tell you which hat is more important, and which you better leave to others. It is a very individual thing, but one thinking about really pays off in the long term.
100 times this. I like listening to podcasts and interviews with great creators in the various areas I work or hobby (music, writing, variety & comedy), and if one thing comes up over and over again in interviews with masters, it's this. It makes you better, faster, and saner. Seinfeld has a great rule for this: never show something you wrote to anyone on the same day you wrote it. It's brilliant in its simplicity. You need to firewall creator from editor from performer.
I can't remember on which things I heard them, but Seinfeld, Chris Rock, George Carlin, and Jon Stewart all say some super interesting things in interviews. And one I do remember because it's a recent discovery is Jamie Lidell's podcast, Hanging out with Audiophiles. The session he did recently with producer Damian Taylor was fantastic. HTH!
Comments
As someone teaching at art school and who worked and works as a freelancer in all kind of creative professions (VFX, graphic design, programming, sounddesign) I think the best advice you can give to anyone in any creative profession is:
Learn to switch hats. When you have your writing hat on, put your critic hat, your editor hat, your publisher hat, etc. down. Make space for the other hats in times when you don't feel like writing. Same is useful for music, film, painting, design, art.
The thing is: it is really easier said than done. Most people constantly worry about other domains when they work on their things. Sure, let some ideas of how you want your work to be published flow into your writing, but don't worry about it. You can still worry later when you read the text again with a different hat. Or you could have worried about that before you started writing. Worry about writing, about which phrase to use to convey what, worry about where you want your text to develope and how fast.
The mastery of this type of very conscious context switching is hard, because nobody is going to tell you which hat you need to wear when and for how long. Nobody will tell you which hat is more important, and which you better leave to others. It is a very individual thing, but one thinking about really pays off in the long term.
100 times this. I like listening to podcasts and interviews with great creators in the various areas I work or hobby (music, writing, variety & comedy), and if one thing comes up over and over again in interviews with masters, it's this. It makes you better, faster, and saner. Seinfeld has a great rule for this: never show something you wrote to anyone on the same day you wrote it. It's brilliant in its simplicity. You need to firewall creator from editor from performer.
do you have any podcasts you could recommend? I'm particularly interested in music, but anything creation related would be useful.
I can't remember on which things I heard them, but Seinfeld, Chris Rock, George Carlin, and Jon Stewart all say some super interesting things in interviews. And one I do remember because it's a recent discovery is Jamie Lidell's podcast, Hanging out with Audiophiles. The session he did recently with producer Damian Taylor was fantastic. HTH!
Thank you for your reply, it added another dimension to the whole process!