Saturday, June 25, 2011

Summer Time and the Living is Easy.

It is (officially) summertime once again and I love it. I've been riding my bike like a fiend and reading books that I want to read. I finished my grad-work for the summer last friday and I finished my first book on Thursday. I read Catcher in the Rye and now I'm on to Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I've got a goal to read at least 10 books before the summer is over in August. My new summer work schedule is pretty bomb. I go to work at 11:30am and get off anywhere from 7:30-9pm. A summer work schedule like this is hard to beat.

I've really been aching for some creativity lately and have found myself soaking up some writing technics I've discovered through StumbleUpon. I'm going to start writing next week and try to produce a new story each week. So I will be sure to post a few of my works on here. I'm realizing what has always stopped me from completing the task is the fear of making mistakes.

This is a mental road block that must be conquered to truly produce art or you never get anywhere. Last summer I read a short little book by David Bayles and Ted Orland called Art & Fear. And in it they present a parable of sorts of an art teacher who did an experiment with his students by grading half the class on the quality of the work they produce and the other half on the quantity of work they produced throughout the semester. The class soon discovered that those who were required to produced more work were able to produce better quality work. They didn't have the time to be nit-picky so they learned what worked and what didn't overtime and were able to perfect their craft. The students graded on quality focused on one final product and stressed and toiled over that one piece to the point where any life that had been found in their work had been sucked out of it. And now this summer I keep coming across this idea. I found a quote by Ira Glass where he gives advice to artists in the beginning of their creative process:
Summer has been going pretty great so far. I can't complain anyways. I hope to make it up to the mountains before too long and maybe hit up a fourteener or two, but right now its pretty chill. I just started working 40+ hours a week so that will definitely help me get my feet on the ground financially for awhile and maybe I won't be struggling from paycheck to paycheck. I see this time as a new phase in my life. I'm becoming an adult more and more. I will definitely write about this more soon, esp. after I read Tillich's Courage to Be and May's Courage to Create. I'll keep you posted. Until then, I hope you are enjoying your summer too. Let me know what you're up to this summer. I'm interested to know.

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