I’ve mentioned Belén before haven’t I? This fresh-mouthed creature is currently my housemate, and she’s getting pretty damn good at being a person that lives in the same apartment as me. Today she made me dinner, and when you get served medium rare burgers with proper heinz ketchup (not the tomato sauce crap that goes on sausages here) and aioli, you forget everything about eating healthy. Hell, I even ate two.
BUT, the reason I’m writing this post is because she found something truly amazing online today, and shared it on facebook.
It is a post made by Chuck Wendig about, quote title, 25 Lies Writers Tell (And Start To Believe). Holy potato, thats some enjoyable reading! And, the best part about it, it can apply to other things that writing stories. In my case, I apply it to telling stories with my camera. Voi voi Integrated Media, I think this might qualify as an appropriation? Maybe not.. Anyways. It also makes me think of how people should look at this in relation to their work in general, and perhaps even studying.
One of my favorites are “I don’t have time!”
HIs claim is that we are all have the same amount of hours in a day. Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have 5 more hours every day than anyone else, neither did Stephen King. If someone is getting all their work done in time, and still have more fun socialising than you, they still have the exact same amount of time as you. GET THE &%#$#$ OFF FACEBOOK AND START DOING STUFF!! You have no excuse.
Another good one is “I have nothing more to learn”
This is just too good, it deserves a quote:
“Oh! And by the way, any of those writers who tout that line: “You can’t teach someone to be a writer, you either are a writer or you aren’t” are high on their own stench and just want to make themselves feel better. What kind of fucked-in-the-head lesson is that? You’re born a writer or you’re not? We’re beholden to some kind of creative caste system? It’s in our blood, like vampirism or syphilis? You can be taught. And you can teach yourself.”
There is ALWAYS more to learn. You might know all the technical specifications on your camera, but you’ll never know all the ways you can use it. Huh.. Thats kind of sad, but kind of good. Oh well.
“I need (insert some bullshit here) to help me write”
Ooooh this one hit me right in the diaphragm.. I’m lousy at this. I constantly make excuses for getting stuff when I’m studying. “Oh, I need some chocolate to motivate myself to work” or “some coke zero would do the trick to wake up my creativity”. I guess that’s just part of being a spoilt brat, thinking I need a reward to do some actual work. I don’t need shit from now on. I’ll do my god damn homework without petrol.
OI that’s where it all came from!! My parents tricked me with that when I was a kid! “Come on Sunniva, we’ll just go a little further and you’ll get some chocolate”. Geee, thanks mom and dad, no I can’t do decent work without rewarding myself.
Or maybe it was because I was crazy cute as a kid (I’m the one to the left)
“My crap isn’t as crappy as some other crap!”
Yeah I do this to. I compare my work with others, and as long as it is equally good I’m happy. To be fair, if I feel like I’m performing bad, I panic, but still, as long as everyone else is doing lousy work, I’m not too concerned that my work isn’t that good. Pretty lucky all my friends are really hard workers I guess..
This applies to my food habits as well! If you eat more than me, it doesn’t matter that I ate more in a day than what a poor tribe member in Africa did in two weeks. Ouch that’s pretty bad. I mean, yeah.
Aaaand finally, “I suck moist open ass!”
Keep telling yourself that and you’ll never succeed.
You have one of two choices: you can be destructive to yourself or constructive. You can tear yourself down or find a way to build yourself up — and I don’t mean build yourself up with compliments but build yourself up with skills and abilities and the practice that gets you there. You suck? That thought sucks. Get better. Improve. Aim big. Give yourself the chance to fail — and then give yourself a chance to build steps from the corpses of your failure so you may climb higher every time.
I’m hoping I’ll be able to apply some of this to my work. Having someone yell some sense into you (in writing) is sometimes really useful.
I’m definitely buying some of his books. Go ahead and read the whole thing, I dare you.
