Anything creative you make is an effort to showcase your taste. It may not be a perfect expression of your ideas, but you can keep working at it.
I think this is probably one of the most important things to think about while making work this semester and far, far beyond. One of the best features of DS 106 is that it asks you to interrogate what makes good storytelling in a variety of mediums. There’s photography, design, video, audio, writing, and even web stories. Whether you’ve created work in some of these areas, or all, or possibly none, there will be moments of uncomfortableness with either the process or the results of your work.
The video above includes the voice of Ira Glass, the producer of the highly successful NPR radio show This American Life. He’s articulating the advice he wished he’d received when first getting started in a creative field. I think my favorite quote is this one in which he’s describing the stuff people make when they’re first starting out:
We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.
Make anything, make it often, do it on a deadline. This is what the daily create asks of you every day. Norm Wright did every one of the first 100 daily creates and celebrated this on the one hundredth by making a collage of all of them.
10 x 10 = 100 by wwnorm.
I like a lot of people in the ds106 community were gobsmacked by his commitment to his work. There is so much to be learned by staying in the creative habit. And if you believe we can all be artists, and you’re willing to work at it, then there is so much that’s possible.
I am inspired.
Indeed. Bravo, Norm!
This is great. What a honor to share space with Ira Glass.
It’s funny, but recently (like about a week ago) I wrote down 5 things that really affected me over the last year.
One thing on the list was the Ira Glass series you presented here, and that very quote in particular.
Another was doing the Daily Create regularly. (its up to 250 now). I really like this short little daily creative break and I appreciate the work of Tim Owens and Alan Levine to set it up and keep it going.
The other things on my list (I wish i could locate the specific links right now)-
There was a post in last years potcert11 class about dealing with the common hangups in making media- you know, stuff like “I don’t like the sound of my voice” or “I don’t like the way I look on video.” I don’t remember who posted it, but it was probably Lisa M Lane. It was very helpful but the message I remember was “Get over yourself”
Another was a video that was tweeted around earlier this year, of John Cleese talking about Creativity. He said, among other things, “Don’t make any decisions until you have to”.
And finally there was this list that Martha Burtis & Jim Groom posted (I have this link because I was just looking at it again this morning) John Cage’s 10 Rules for Students and Teachers. http://bavatuesdays.com/john-cages-10-rules-for-students-and-teachers/.
Norm, thanks so much for sharing these other bits of inspiration. I too discovered John Cleese’s talk on creativity and what I stood out to me was his description of writing comedic sketches. He remembered how a colleague was more talented and funny, per say as the jokes came easier. But Cleese was willing to keep playing with a sketch, make it better and better through iterating and hard work.
And 250? WOW!! I can’t wait till we hit that magic number of 365.
Miguel!
I love this little inspirational video! Thanks for posing it, and am going to promptly repost it on my blog and in my Moodle classroom! Sooooo true! Our catch phrase, ” Make art, dammit” fits right in here, “Do it even if you do it wrong because is in the doing that we learn and grow toward our own, best selves.”