Aim for imperfection! You can clean it up later. I call my first draft in script writing the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Any f—ing way to the coast is the right way! It is unfair to criticize ourselves for taking a few wrong turns on a journey of exploration that has never happened before.
When we have roughly mapped our new territory, the next step is to prune out the failed branches of the journey, put the freeway through and erect helpful direction signs. This is also called a re-write.
Apart from the occasional brilliant “eureka” gestalts, most great ideas have to be raised like tiny babies into the adults they will become. Expect some throwing-up and diaper changing, some falling down and bruising, some tears and tantrums.
Professor Robert W. Weinberg of Temple University studies problem-solving and creativity—or, as he describes it, “The cognitive processes involved in the intentional production of novelty: solutions to problems, works of art, scientific theories, and inventions. He examines creative geniuses like Edison, Charley Parker, Frank Lloyd Wright and Picasso. He feels they are not born geniuses. Instead, he says, “Most creative giants work ferociously hard and, through a series of incremental steps, achieve things that appear (to the outside world) like epiphanies and breakthroughs.”
You and I may have a chance yet. As Einstein said, “It’s not that I am so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
Seek Out “Creative Midwives”
Ideas are like small children. Avoid letting anyone shout at them, it can make them run away. Seek out men and women with spiritually supportive souls, who value your work and who can help you push through the pain of birthing something new. They are there for your child and not to impose their prejudices. The best can give you truthful insight on how to strengthen your progeny for the hard scrabble world it will have to grow up in.
Dr. Ericsson is the researcher who concluded that spending 10,000 hours at a skill is required to become a true expert—a statement that might ignore the many good works and breakthroughs accomplished by the young. He assessed research on top performers in fields ranging from violin performance and surgery to computer programming and chess. And in a 2007 Harvard Business Review article, he stated that true expertise requires teachers who give “constructive, even painful, feedback.” And he found that all of those who reached a pinnacle of accomplishment deliberately picked unsentimental coaches who would challenge them and drive them to higher levels of performance. A committed tough-loving but sympathetic ally to share your philosophies and fears with can be astonishingly helpful.
Conversely, do not share your early intuitions carelessly. Especially with the selfish, desperate, arrogant or self-absorbed naysayers. They can suck the optimism and energy out of your vision by casting their ignorance and prejudices over the glowing embers of what might have been a blazing discovery. Consider Steve Jobs words.“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinion drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Don’t Judge Beginnings by the Finished Work of Others
It’s like looking at the brightness of a light bulb and assuming that it was an easy creation for Edison. It was not. It took more than 4,000 attempts to get the darn thing to work! And he’s quoted as saying he “ached to give it up!”
Annoyingly, after all the blood and tears have been invested to get them “right,” finished works can look deceptively obvious and simple. Blaming our early ragged progress for a lack of instant perfection, by comparison with completed successes, is a cruel and unnecessary punishment.
We need to give ourselves rewards and encouragement along the journey. We need to see ourselves as heroes and enjoy the challenges in our lives. And sometimes we need to rest and build up strength because inventing the future involves brief inspiration followed by a lot of perspiration. We can exhaust ourselves without being aware of it. I have often felt guilty about taking a break and then been stunned how quickly solutions flew into my head afterward.
Rejections Have to Be Expected
Being right doesn’t always make a breakthrough inevitable. Kathryn Stockett’s smash success The Help was rejected by 60 literary agents. The Beatles were rejected—”We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”—and this poetic statement about a scientific breakthrough:”Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” That was Harry Warner of Warner Bros. in 1927. The list of brilliantly abysmal rejections is laughable—except when it hits home.
Do not surrender your beliefs. We are often dynamically much stronger than we think we are. There are courageous models of unusual stamina all round us—soldiers, firemen, people with debilitating illnesses—who find the spirit to endure more obstacles than we can imagine.
I was very moved by Diana Nyad. She swam for 53 hours to make the 103-mile crossing from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. This was her fifth attempt to make this swim! “All of us suffer heartaches and difficulties in our lives, Nyad says. “If you say to yourself, ‘find a way,’ you’ll make it through.” Then she adds. ”You never are too old to chase your dreams.” She is 64 years young.
We homo-sapiens are pretty cool creatures. There is a spark of that courage in all of us. But we may not know it until we call on ourselves for it.
Oprah Winfrey was fired because she was “unfit for TV,” J. K. Rowling was a divorced mother on welfare and 12 publishers rejected Harry Potter. Steven Spielberg was rejected by USC Film School three times and never got in. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Winston Churchill was cast to the wildness, as he described it, for many years before being called in to become prime minister and lead England during World War Two. We should be honored to be in their company.
People Who Accept Rejection Better than Me!
I have immense respect and empathy for those willing to act. I hold them in awe. As a writer-director I get to hide behind the camera and send my scripts out to audition for me! I collect my rejections by remote control.
Actors are visibly and personally exposed from the audition to the edit and frequently sacrifice control of their final work to people like me. That is courageous, and I respect that trust immensely. Without them, there’d be no one to make my words sound much better than they are.
Like actors, we cannot control whether we get the role. The variables are too random. But we cannot fail when we use auditions as opportunities, ones we control by exploring our personal best and, thereby, making ourselves stronger for the future.
Celebrate your rejections. You got up to bat, and that’s the only route to win the World Series. Babe Ruth was the king of strikeouts as well as home runs.
Stay in the game somehow. I have seen the unexpected come to the rescue. This year, I was one of the producers, along with John Watson and Julian Adams on RCR’s Phantom, starring Ed Harris, David Duchovny and Will Fichtner. A great project, written and directed by good friend Todd Robinson. When it seemed we hit a major road block, our team at the Paradigm Agency made a generous gesture that enabled the movie to go foreword. There are businesses out there, run by people with hearts.
Caring is a powerful business advantage.
- Scott Johnson
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