WellsBaum.blog

Writing about life and arts

Quotes

The emotional journey of creating anything great

By 9 Comments

The emotional journey of creating anything great #persistence #courage
via Bill Gross

Why is it that every new idea begins with excitement but ends in the ‘dark swamp of despair?'

Writes Angela Duckworth in her book Grit: 

“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”

Angela Duckworth

The key to achieving anything is not necessarily maintaining that excitement but pushing through all the CRAP (criticism, rejection, assholes, and pressure) and maintaining a beginner's mindset.

Of course, you're likely to lose interest, energy, and emotional support from family and friends along the way. That's why it's equally important to have a vision of where you want to go and what you'd like to accomplish. Developing habits, a daily practice, also help fight the resistance.

Good things are supposed to take time. Progress ebbs and flows. It's beneficial, almost necessary, to step away from the work and plan unscheduled time. Even when you're not thinking, you're thinking; the brain never turns off.

If innovation were easy, anybody would do it.

Art as stimuli

By 5 Comments

A gif of man standing in subway watching the train pass

We need art just as we need food. Yes, art is unnecessary. It is “everything you don’t have to do,” as Brian Eno put it. But it's also the fuel that powers emotions and deeper thinking.

“Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Alter an image, modify a sound. It doesn't matter if the visual or the audible illustrate irreality. For the maker and the viewer, art offers an exit out of happiness.

Inspiration is stimuli

Art helps drive human progress. It is a snapshot in time, illustrating the context and habits of now and yesterday. Cinemagraphs of waves reminds us that water controls the Earth. Images of loose plastic remind us not to dump problems on tomorrow.

Art reminds us to slow down, to compel ourselves to see the beauty of what's already there. So obsessed with innovation, especially in the chase of ephemeral pixels, it's easy to forget how we had it before. We must build responsibly.

“Another flaw in human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Stylization is inessential. But it drives culture. It ensures the durability of both uniqueness and artifice.

gif by SambMotion

The World According to Garp

By 4 Comments

Below is an excerpt from John Irving's 1978 novel The World According to Garp:

Garp threw away his second novel and began a second novel. Unlike Alice, Garp was a real writer—not because he wrote more beautifully than she wrote but because he knew what every artist should know: as Garp put it, “You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.” Even if these so-called endings and beginnings are illusions. Garp did not write faster than anyone else, or more; he simply always worked with the idea of completion in mind.

Finish what you start, or throw it away and start something you'll finish. Ship it.

On the other hand, you can put it aside and let it marinate.

Everything comes to use, eventually. You can only connect the dots looking backward after the experience.

art via giphy

Seth Godin on writer’s block

By 15 Comments

Writer’s block is a myth created by people who are afraid to the do the work. / Seth Godin on writer's block #amwriting

Writer's block is a myth created by people who are afraid to the do the work.

There are various reasons writers let the blank page get the best of their emotions.

  • Trying to be too perfect
  • Procrastinating en route to excuses that usually include the word “But….”
  • Unwilling to fail or write poor sentences first
  • Living up to someone else's expectations
  • Being afraid to share their work

Writer's block appears to be the work of evil. It wants us to quit and hide in shame instead of “dancing with the amygdala” as Seth Godin pleads on the very subject in his new podcast: ‘No such thing (as writer’s block).' Stream it below.

In reality, no one gets talker's block just as a plumber never gets plumber's block or a teacher gets teaching block. Such stuckness is a work of fiction.

Pro tip: The habit of blogging every day helps me defeat writer's block. The more you write, the more you have to play with. Start your blogging journey and set up your website for FREE on WordPress right here.

Forget inspiration and do the work

If we choose to be professional, we choose to show up consistently and dance with the fear. We develop habits that allow us to unlock what Steven Pressfield's calls the resistance in his book The War of Art, compelling the muse to work with us rather than against us.

This is what Seth Godin says on facing the resistance:

“The resistance never goes away. The more important the work is, the louder it gets. The harder you try to make it go away, the hard and more clever it gets in response. The work is doing it when you don't feel like it. Doing it when it's not easy.”

Seth Godin

Fear leads to inertia which leads to regret. The lizard brain wants us to run away and never come back.

What if instead of giving up, we started writing by doing it poorly, persisting through the maze of bad ideas. Only when we have something to work with can go back we tweak it.

Perfection is futile — writers rarely nail in a good sentence in the first draft. Rough drafts are expectedly shitty. All writing is in the edit, anyway.

If we write regularly, we'll get better at avoiding the pain of getting stuck. Habits are everything. But if we do get blocked? Again, keep writing with no regard for perfection.

Said novelist John McPhee: “The funny thing is that you get to a certain point and you can’t quit. Because I always worried: If you quit, you’ll quit again. The only way out was to go forward, to learn your way and write your way out of it.”

In short, heed this writing advice: Don't whine, don't complain, get busy and make things. Speed-write, set an imaginary deadline, write by hand — do whatever it takes to get something down. And if we're still stuck — go for walk while listening to Seth's podcast below:

gif via rewire.org & big hero 6

Everyone is a critic

By

blog/everyone-is-a-critic/60045652_2011460432496437_3062314035690078208_n/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/wellsbaum.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/60045652_2011460432496437_3062314035690078208_n.jpg?fit=500%2C373&ssl=1" data-orig-size="500,373" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="60045652_2011460432496437_3062314035690078208_n" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/wellsbaum.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/60045652_2011460432496437_3062314035690078208_n.jpg?fit=300%2C224&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/wellsbaum.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/60045652_2011460432496437_3062314035690078208_n.jpg?fit=500%2C373&ssl=1" data-pin-description="Not everyone is an artist but everyone is a f* critic. Marcel Duchamp, French-American painter, sculptor, and writer #art #quotes" src="https://wellsbaum.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/60045652_2011460432496437_3062314035690078208_n.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44805" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/wellsbaum.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/60045652_2011460432496437_3062314035690078208_n.jpg?w=500&ssl=1 500w, https://i0.wp.com/wellsbaum.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/60045652_2011460432496437_3062314035690078208_n.jpg?resize=300%2C224&ssl=1 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" />

Not everyone is an artist but everyone is a fucking critic.

Marcel Duchamp, French-American painter, sculptor, and writer

‘How you do anything is how you do everything’

By Leave a Comment

Below is an excerpt from The Daily Stoic, a book I always tend to when I get frazzled:

Pay attention to what’s in front of you—the principle, the task, or what’s being portrayed.

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.22

It’s fun to think about the future. It’s easy to ruminate on the past. It’s harder to put that energy into what’s in front of us right at this moment—especially if it’s something we don’t want to do. We think: This is just a job; it isn’t who I am. It doesn’t matter. But it does matter. Who knows—it might be the last thing you ever do. Here lies Dave, buried alive under a mountain of unfinished business.

There is an old saying: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” It’s true. How you handle today is how you’ll handle every day. How you handle this minute is how you’ll handle every minute.

Ryan Holiday

via giphy

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

By 2 Comments

“Reading is the creative center of a writer's life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books—of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone's favorite, the john. You can even read while you're driving, thanks to the audiobook revolution. Of the books I read each year, anywhere from six to a dozen are on tape. As for all the wonderful radio you will be missing, come on—how many times can you listen to Deep Purple sing “Highway Star”?

Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft