Dear writers,
I want to share with you some super-inspiring and accelerating words from writers and creators. These are long, lush interviews. I’ve chosen my favorite parts to lure you in… You can listen to the audio or look for the link to the transcript.
David Whyte
“…realizing that the whole david whyte project was completely absurd. The name that I’d given to myself… Looking at something that actually had already passed. What was real about your identity is actually what’s just about to precipitate out of the seasonal edge of your existence. That as yet does not yet have a name. That is actually the place in which you write good poetry from the unknown, below the horizon of your understanding, lying deep inside yourself.
It’s a very physical experience. At the beginning it’s inchoate, vague. It’s the place that’s willing to engage with the fiercest conversations of existence.
It’s the part of you that already knows you’re going to have to give every last thing away away. It’s the part of you that lives in the center of the pattern. This is what Coleridge and Keats called the primary imagination. The ability to think up new things was only the fancy, or the secondary imagination. It’s the central physical tonality from which you’re able to lead the fierce conversations of existence. It’s the place from which you’re useful to other people. You’re useful because your art is beginning from a place below the horizon whereby meaning is mediated by language. It’s below language but it takes a linguistic form. If it’s invitational, surprising, loving speech it almost always comes from that place.”
Robert Rodriguez
“Somebody said, “I’ve got a project, all the pieces are actually pretty much there. I just guess I’m not ready.” And I said, “That’s going to be on your tombstone: ‘Here lies so-and-so. He was never ready.’” Why is it that art you have to be ready for? In life, you didn’t know you were going to get a flat tire. You didn’t know you were going to go to work and be fired. You didn’t know the fires were going to be raging. Every day you’re like this, trying to move with the — you’re not ready for anything life has thrown at you, but you become ready on the spot.
Why is it that we think art and life should not be the same? Why art has to be, you have to be ready before you can begin? That’s no relation, they should be the same. You’re not going to be ready until you’re almost done with a project because a lot of the answers you need are not going to happen until you’re on the journey and that’s what keeps most people from doing it…
I catch people all the time describing themselves, and I go, “You’ve got to change that description.” Already out of the gate, you’re talking about yourself in a way that’s not going to helpful. Like, “Oh, well, I don’t have access.” Everyone has access. You have a phone, you can make actually a story on a phone, or you can write, or — I just say whenever I hear anyone use some kind of negative connotation to something like, “Well, I want to make something, but I just don’t have the time.” If you’re waiting for time to happen, it’s not going to happen. All the time’s gone. There’s no time, but we can make time. We can make time for anything that we put our mind to, so don’t give me that shit. That’s like taking a hatchet and chopping off your left leg before the race. You literally did this to yourself. You just hobbled yourself for no reason, with these beliefs, and it’s all you. You are your own worst enemy. You’re like the one in the audience in your way. The biggest obstacle in your life is you, always.
You are writing a story, and you’re writing your own story while you’re doing it. The story of who you are, and who you’re going to become, and what you’re going to achieve as you’re writing a fake story. That’s why they go together. That’s why people identify with stories. You’re literally — we’re writing our own story. So do you have doubts? Yeah, but I’m going to write past it. I’m going to write my story to where I’m not the guy that has doubts, so that’s the power of creativity and labeling… I’m going to figure out — it’s like you have to make your business card first that says, “A guy with no doubts.”… So fear forward, get out of the comfort zone. That means you’re on the right track. If you don’t have fear on something you’re going to do that day, probably fucking wasting your time.
I’m not smart enough to come up with these ideas. They’re out there. And everybody in every discipline has a different line for that. Like Keith Richards says, “I don’t come up with these riffs. They’re all floating around. I was just the first one to pull it down and use it.” They all have their version of that, that it’s not from them. And that’s the best way to think, because then there’s no ego involved. And if you have no ego then it’s just, you’re a conduit for this creative spirit to come through you, well then you can do anything. I can be a good pipe, I just get my ego out of the way and let it come through.
It’s because creative spirit, in my theory, it doesn’t have hands. It’s waiting for you to get off your ass, and pick up the pen, and then it can help take over. And so always take action. That’s why I say always take action. Don’t wait to be inspired. If you just start making the film, ideas you never in a million years would’ve come up with come into your head, because it’s not you. It’s coming through you now.
Creative spirit must be very disappointed in people who don’t take action, who sit there.