A friend of mine is an excellent cook and has been for years. She can glance over a recipe that's she's never seen before and: see if it'd be a good recipe, see if it is a correct recipe that will work well, and tweak it so that it's better. Why can she do this? Because she loves to cook and does a lot of cooking.
Creative people can do the same, with whatever "follow your bliss" creative passion. Like my friend, the more we create, the better we get at creation. The more I write, the more I'm able to see if I've got a good recipe, see what's right and what needs to be tweaked.
As with any other skill, the more we practice, the better we become. I'm keeping that in mind as I work. And the 70 Days of Sweat helps keep me turning out pages! Who said: "You're not a writer until you've written a million words"?
How do you follow your bliss and keep following your bliss?
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7 comments:
I started to reply to this but my response got so long I decided to post it on my own blog here: Practice, practice, practice
Excellent points in your post, jim. Reminded me of the saying: Everything is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Now who said that first?
I believe you are misquoting Thomas Edison who said, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".
Aha! Well, he should know...but I do believe that all writers are geniuses...
You both make great points. I do believe as we practice and grow we are more able to recognize what's right and wrong in our writing and others.
But to continue the cooking analogy, there comes a time to stop adding spices and just put the dang thing in the oven.
I'm still sweating away the words, though, and not in the sniffing to see what works and what doesn't stage.
If I really followed my bliss I'd do nothing but write short stories, make jewelry, garden, chatter on blogs, and have lunch with friends. Writing novels is not bliss (to me), although having written them is pretty nice.
Nancy, what kind of jewelry do you create? Can we see some? And I'd add to your list: reading. Not enough time to read and it sure is blissful.
And Kathy, sometimes I think what really slows me down is my continual sniffing...
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