Macleod, Hugh (cartoonist)
People who are ‘ready’ give off a different vibe than people who aren’t. Animals can smell fear; maybe that’s it. The minute you become ready is the minute you stop dreaming. Suddenly it’s no longer about ‘becoming’. Suddenly it’s about ‘doing’.
The best way to get approval is not to need it.
Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle i.e. being human.
Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is.
Admit that your own private Mount Everest exists. That is half the battle.
You can’t love a crowd the same way you can love a person. And a crowd can’t love you the way a single person can love you. Intimacy doesn’t scale. Not really. Intimacy is a one-on-one phenomenon.
The fact is, the old clichés work for us in abstract terms, but they never work out in real life quite the same way. Life is messy; clichés are clean and tidy.
Diluting your product to make it more ‘commercial’ will just make people like it less.
If you have the creative urge, it isn’t going to go away. But sometimes it takes a while before you accept the fact.
Your idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing. The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more it will change the world.
You have to find a way of working that makes it dead easy to take full advantage of your inspired moments. They never hit at a convenient time, nor do they last long.
Part of being a Master is learning how to sing in nobody else’s voice but your own.
Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it’s managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong.
The bars of West Hollywood and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. And a lot of them aren’t even young anymore; their B-plans having been washed away by Vodka & Tonics years ago. Meanwhile their competition is at home, working their asses off.
Neither should you fret too much about ‘writer’s block’. If you are looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing comes to you, then go do something else. Writer’s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you SHOULD feel the need to say something.
