Inspiration

Watch this:

It’s taken me a long time to get around to watching Gary Vaynerchuk work, and I’m annoyed at myself for that.

Making Time to Make

Merlin Mann just posted the final part of his Making Time to Make series. If you haven’t already, go and read it:

• Bad Correspondence
• The Job You Think You Have
• One Clear Line

Do you generate more IMs than comic panels? Have you drafted more web comments than scenes in your screenplay? Or, for that matter, do you find you’re taking more meetings than photos these days?

Hmm. Quit shaming me.

What is it that you really do? What’s the last thing you made that really excited you?

Double hmm.

Reverse Point of View

This is a good example about talking about things from the reverse point of view, where Erin McKean imagines a dystopia where language isn’t free _{(9 minute presentation)}:

My favourite quote:

It would probably cost the average person a month’s salary to use an exclamation point; semi-colons would be highly discounted though, due to lack of demand.

Why do I mention this? Two reasons:

• I happen to like the presentation and wanted to share it.
• Thinking about things from the opposite point of view than normal can often generate new ideas.

For example, what if New York sometime in the future wasn’t a post-apocalyptic wasteground? What if that heist story was told from the point of view of the victim? What if the hitchhiker was the psycho? Trivial examples all; I’m sure you have far better ideas than I do!

Work Through The Suck

Ira Glass is host and executive producer on This American Life. In this video, he talks about working through the suck, using himself as an example.

Choice quote (approximate):

All of us who do creative work get into it because we have good taste … but there’s a gap, so for the first couple of years you’re making this stuff and it’s really not that good … but your taste is still killer, and it’s so good that you can tell that what you’re making is a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase; a lot of people at that point, they quit.

(via)

Joyous Jealousy

I can’t find any online reference for this, but Bob Kurtz apparently coined the phrase joyous jealousy. So here’s me stealing the glory and providing said online reference:

The feeling you have when you experience someone else’s work and think: “I wish I’d made that!” followed by the thought “Well, what can I learn from that?”

This absolutely holds true for me on a number of topics: TV, games, companies, films, books and products. In thinking about it though, I seem to feel it less often with movies. I’ll have to give some thought as to why that might be. And yes, I really did say companies there.

This isn’t about purloining ideas. I didn’t watch Finding Nemo and then decide I would write a film about some fish, or even about a father looking for his lost son. Rather, this is about inspiration: watching Finding Nemo made me want to write. More than that, it made me aspire to write something that good. Why do you do what you do? A lot of writers will say it’s because they have to write; game designers might say it’s because they want to make the game that they always wanted to play. I don’t think that’s what drives me.

When people ask why I do what I do, joyous jealousy gives me a neat way to summarise it. I love to create things, to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. And when I have a positive experience other people’s work, it does inspire me to go off and create my own. I’ve even been known to get animated about things in such rushes of blood. The fact that I have so many areas that I follow is certainly a contributing factor to my lack of focus, but equally, I think it all feeds into and serves the overall creative process. Most importantly, I think, it gives me a number of creative outlets. Hopefully this helps make my ideas stronger. Perhaps it even makes me interesting, though I doubt anything could make me interesting. Possibly dangerous, since I know a little about a lot of different things, but not interesting.

Here’s a few things I am joyously jealous of:

• Anything by Pixar (The only reference I can find to Kurtz and this phrase is on the Toy Story 2 10th Anniversary DVD)
• Malcolm Gladwell books & articles
• The West Wing
• 30 Rock
• Portal
• Everyday Shooter
• Innocent
• Every company featured in Mavericks at Work
• The Walworth Farce

What inspires you to do what you do? What are you jealous of?