Richard Pryor - the best there ever was.
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Do you remember the first time you realized that you had something special?
I am often asked that question, so I thought I’d share my experience with you. My friend TJ Dawe has a great blog you should check out called Beams and Struts.
I answered this question and more in a guest post on his blog so here’s the link to check out my story.
http://beamsandstruts.com/articles/item/366-real-spit
This is a guest post by TJ Dawe, an award winning (and published) writer/performer/director, whose solo credits include Totem Figures , The Slipknot and Tired Cliches, and whose credits as a collaborator include Toothpaste & Cigars (in development as the film The F Word), 52 Pick-up, The Power of Ignorance, Dishpig and The One Man Star Wars Trilogy.
Most artists I know work multiple projects. They might overlap, or you work them one after the other, but there are a few sitting around in your head most of the time, each calling for attention. So what do you do? Do some of them deserve more attention and effort than others? Should you give certain projects your best and coast through the ones less likely to make a splash?
I recently read an interview with comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis which addressed exactly this.
First, a bit of context. Bendis writes five superhero comics (all different titles) every month (a pretty incredible output). For the past handful of summers, Marvel has had a major cross-over event involving basically every character they have, the story playing out in individual titles but mostly in a miniseries (which Bendis usually writes too).
So a journalist asked him about “event fatigue” – fans getting overloaded with world-at-stake stories that shake up the whole Marvel Universe. He responded:
“I will tell you my philosophy that I have not wavered on one bit: every story is an event. Every one. Every story I write I feel has dramatic ramifications to the characters I’m writing for. I learned this the first year I was writing Ultimate Spider-Man. Every book matters. Every single one. These events are so much fun to write and market and get people wound up about. It’s so much fun. But every single book I write to me feels that important or I wouldn’t put it out. When people say they have event fatigue I say you have fatigue over awesome things happening in the books you spend money on?”
This philosophy has done Bendis well. He started out writing and drawing his own crime comics in Cleveland, then Marvel noticed him, picked him up, and now he’s the leading writer in the industry.
In addition to his Marvel stuff, he writes two creator owned titles (crime fiction), one of which (Powers) is being turned into a TV series at FX (he’s an executive producer). In February he put out an all ages graphic novel he cowrote with his daughter. These other comics are incredible too. He does dialogue and story like Aaron Sorkin (one of his idols) or David Mamet (another one).
He also answers emails and letters at the back of each issue, he tweets like Kevin Smith, and does endless interviews. And he teaches graphic novel writing at Portland State University.
He’s passionate. He loves what he’s doing. He throws himself into it. And it’s paying off. He’s won a shelf of awards, his books are all top-selling, and Hollywood’s been bringing him in to do story consulting on superhero movies. But he still commits himself to the small projects just as much as the big ones. And the book that’s being made into a TV series – he co-created it before he’d gained any mainstream following at Marvel. And he’s still writing it.
Anyone who wants to make a splash as an artist can (and should) adopt this approach. Every time you create something, you’re representing yourself. Who you are. What you have to offer. Every project you work on is important. Every single one. Why devote any of your energy to something you don’t believe in? Every chance at bat is an opportunity to hit a home run.
-TJ Dawe
8 Mile is one of my favorite movies about an artist – maybe because it’s relevant to anyone struggling to make it. 
Here’s what it says:
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Do what you can where you are. The movie opens with Jimmy “B. Rabbit” Smith (Eminem) competing in a freestyle rap battle in a dingy Detroit club. He wants to be a hip-hop emcee, and anyone can compete, so that’s where he goes. There’s no sense that music industry people go anywhere near the place, but that’s something to worry about later. For now, get on stage. Learn your stuff. Get good enough to hit that first ceiling.
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There will be setbacks. Rabbit chokes in the battle. He leaves the stage not having rapped a word, booed and laughed at. Not every set is going to go well. Some will be absolute disasters. It might be hard to imagine a young Richard Pryor or Robin Williams or Ellen Degeneres bombing in a comedy club, but they did. If you think a great author can do no wrong, try reading Salman Rushdie’s first novel, or Yann Martel’s, or Kurt Vonnegut’s. Everyone bombs, especially when they’re learning. But you have to start somewhere. Despite his humiliation, Rabbit comes back and competes again.
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Get to Work. Your life won’t come to a halt as you try to make it. One scene shows Rabbit riding the bus to his job at an auto plant, holding a pad of paper, pen in hand. The pad’s covered in his writing – lyrics, we’re left to assume. If you’ve only got enough time to snatch a few minutes here and there to work on your art, then a few minutes will have to do. Better that than waiting till you’ve got the time, the perfect work room, the energy, the inspiration, the grant. You can wait for those things forever. And even if you get them, there will always be more reasons why you can’t start yet. Get over these delaying tactics. Get to work. Find a way.
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Focus on the present, not the future. In one scene, one of Rabbit’s friends talks about the record deals they need to sign (no record company is courting any of them). Another one talks about putting the profits from their records into savings bonds so they can build their own studio. Another says they need to get “fat bitches and fine rides”. Rabbit berates them all: “Man shut the fuck up. All of us never do shit about nuttin’ and we’re still broke as fuck and living at home with our moms.” Dreaming about the future won’t help you get to that future. Facing up to the imperfect present can give you the kick in the ass to do something about it.
Be ready for a long, slow climb. Rabbit wins the battle at the movie’s finale, but there aren’t any agents or record execs in the audience who slip him a business card and tell him to call them in the morning. We grow up with the Cinderella story of success in our minds. Someone drops into your life, and poof, you never have to worry about anything ever again. But what do you do if that doesn’t happen? Rabbit leaves the club, grabs his change of clothes, and heads back to the auto plant to work a graveyard shift. In a previous scene someone asked him what he’s trying to earn all this overtime for. His answer: studio time. That’s the formula. Work hard. Save up. Do what you can. Persist. You still might not make it. But your odds are a lot better than if you stay at home, waiting for a fairy godmother to notice you.
-TJ Dawe
This is a guest post from TJ Dawe, a successful Vancouver based writer/performer/director who’s toured solo shows at more than eighty comedy and theatre festivals in the last decade and a bit. He’s got six published plays, a humour book, and his directing credits include The One Man Star Wars Trilogy, which played Off-Broadway in New York for five months. He also blogs, tweets, podcasts, and has stuff on youtube.
This is a guest post from TJ Dawe, a successful Vancouver based writer/performer/director who’s toured solo shows at more than eighty comedy and theatre festivals in the last decade and a bit. He’s got six published plays, a humour book, and his directing credits include The One Man Star Wars Trilogy, which played Off-Broadway in New York for five months. He alsoblogs, tweets, podcasts, and has stuff on youtube.
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The Shawshank Redemption flopped in the theatres. Later people started renting it, talking about it, buying the DVD. Now it’s ranked number one on the internet movie database’s user poll of every movie ever made, surpassing the next contender (The Godfather) by almost 100, 000 votes. Why has everyone become passionate about this flop? Here’s my take: because it’s an analogy for being stuck in a day job.
I don’t know anyone who’s spent time in prison for a murder they didn’t commit, but the vast majority of my artist friends toil in soul killing day jobs to make ends meet. How do you muster the energy to create after getting home from an exhausting day doing something you hate?
In the two decades of his incarceration Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) builds a library, teaches prisoners to read, and digs an escape tunnel – outside of the accounting work he does for the warden and guards. I grew up with the notion that artists work in the throes of divine inspiration. That can definitely happen. But Robertson Davies (Fifth Business, What’s Bred in the Bone) started each new novel by writing a series of notes, outlining the story, the characters, and everything he’d need to research. This took three years. In the meantime he edited and wrote for a newspaper, helped raise three daughters, and later, taught and administrated a graduate college. Philip Glass (Soundtrack for The Hours, Kundun) drove a cab and repaired appliances, working on his compositions every morning. Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Choke) repaired diesel trucks and went to a novel writing workshop one evening a week.
Spending a little time each day on a project gets your mind working on it no matter what else you’re doing. In spare moments a problem might unlock itself. Maybe something you see or a random utterance from an overheard conversation will make a light bulb click. Can you find an hour a day for your art? Half an hour? It might not sound like much, but it adds up if you keep at it. Don’t have the time? How much time do you spend on Facebook?
When Dufresne escapes, the other prisoners don’t have a clue. He hadn’t shared his plan with even his closest friends. A lot of people talk about how they’re working on a screenplay, or how their band is gonna be huge. Be careful of this. If someone’s genuinely making their career happen, great. But talking about all the things you’re going to do can be a substitute for doing the actual work.
Dufresne’s tunneling takes nineteen years. The long slow climb isn’t as sexy as overnight success. We don’t see it much in biopics.
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But doing something each day can give focus and purpose to your entire existence. Any day job is more endurable when there’s even a possible exit into something better somewhere down the line. And those nineteen years are going to pass anyway. If there’s an injection of passion in your every day, your life will be better whether you make it or not. And you just might wind up on a beach in Mexico, sharing margaritas with Morgan Freeman.
-TJ Dawe
Share, Tweet, discuss, comment and Facebook this post – we can all use a margarita now and then! Day jobs don’t have to be life jobs. The choice is yours.
This is a guest post from TJ Dawe, a Vancouver based writer/performer/director who’s toured solo shows at more than eighty comedy and theatre festivals in the last decade and a bit. He’s got six published plays, a humour book, and his directing credits include The One Man Star Wars Trilogy, which played Off-Broadway in New York for five months. He also blogs, tweets, podcasts, and has stuff on youtube.
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You can go to auditions, you can play covers. That approach works brilliantly for a few. But what if you’re not one of them? Or what if you’re tired of bringing someone else’s work to life?
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Take things into your own hands. Create your own material. And it’s a lot easier to see what you’ve got if you work with someone else. Here are a few things to look for in a creative partner.
-Try to find someone who can offer you a different perspective. A good collaborator will come at a subject from a different direction than you, seeing things you can’t and making connections you won’t.
-Try to find someone who’ll tell you what you need to hear. Imagine if George Lucas had had someone to tell him his scripts for the Star Wars prequels weren’t good enough. When he made the original Star Wars he did. In Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays he describes how he had Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck give him notes on various drafts. Then he got them to rewrite a third of the dialogue.
-Try to find someone whose talent and opinion you respect. The two of you are bound to disagree on some things. Giving in to someone you hold in high esteem isn’t a bad way to go.
-Try to find someone whose feedback doesn’t come from their ego. Not every collaborator is going to have the good of the project as their top priority. Some people are in it for themselves. Don’t work with them.
-Try to find someone who’s as invested in the project as you. Are you the only one trying to get together to work? Are you the only one coming to each meeting having done any work since the last time you met up? Probably not good signs.
Miles Davis & Gil Evans
-Try to find someone who stimulates your creativity and brings out the best in you. In Miles: The Autobiography, the jazz legend said this about Gil Evans, his collaborator on Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain: “Gil was the kind of guy you love being around, because he would see things nobody else saw… he would show me orchestrations and say, ‘Miles, listen to the cello right here. How else do you think that he could have played that passage?’ He’d make you think about shit all the time.”
It can be scary to let someone else see the sloppy, incomplete ideas you’ll work into something presentable to the public. But if the combination of people is right, creative energy grows in ways it couldn’t otherwise. In The Incompleat Folksinger Pete Seeger says: “One and one equals four. Two and two equals fifty. When two people get together their ideas multiply geometrically. Ten ideas plus ten ideas equals not twenty but one hundred. Pool your ideas. Be firm in criticism and self-criticism until you are happy with the result.”
-TJ Dawe
Sitting around waiting for someone else to give you a career or find you work as an artist is a dead end. Share this post with every creative person you know and encourage them to be proactive.