From the Inspirational Thought Unit
The first 15 minutes of this podcast was just great. It is an episode from Seth Godin's Akimbo podcast which I recommend listening to from the beginning if you do any sort of creative work. In this episode he breaks down the Beatles Get Back documentary and how it applies to "The Practice" which is what he calls doing the work to get good.
One part in here stuck out to me more then the rest (and it's ALL great). It starts right at 9:52 and I'll just share the transcript here in case you don't want to listen:
This time George is stuck, and he comes to Paul and John and asks for help. John gives him standard Paul advice, just say a word, whatever word pops into your head cuz you'll come up with a better word.
*he then tells him to say "attracts me like a cauliflower" see video above*
I think putting the word cauliflower on the wall of your cubicle, or your home office is a really good idea because every time you see that word cauliflower, it will remind you: just put in a word and then you can make it better.
But what happens here is George can't adopt the new. Practice because it doesn't come easily. He's fighting it. And we keep waiting for him to say the right words, because we know the right words are going to come, we've heard the song a million times before, and the right words, eventually came. But if he was a little lighter on his feet, if he wasn't looking in the moment for the kind of perfection and approval, he was seeking, it would have come more easily.
That's part of the practice.
This was great for me to hear right now because I started laying out pages for a comic this week. Laying out a comic is essentially writing through drawing and it's difficult. There's so many ways to visualize the story how do you find the one true way that best reflects the scenes in your mind? The infinity of the blank canvas can be paralyzing.
I needed to be reminded to just put down cauliflower on the page.
It removes some of the friction, and the wall of it needed to be good. It doesn't need to be good at this stage it just needs to exist. Molding it into something good comes next.
-Jake