Never ever, ever muzzle your inner critic just because your peers tell you your work is "strong." Your peers are idiots. Or lying. Take your pick. Also? If someone can't find something wrong with your work, you shouldn't listen to the positive things they have to say about your work. It's just that simple. The minute you do either of these things, your work is shot to hell. And then you end up crying all over your professor's office.
And you know what else? There is no way you can do this artist/writer thing without being miserable. If you take the time you think you need in order to be a sane person, your work suffers, and then you suffer. If you don't take the time you think you need in order to be a sane person, you suffer, and your work may suffer anyway. If you put the work first, you'll always be an unhappy and unbalanced person, but if you don't put the work first, then you make crappy work, and how is that supposed to make you happy?
I now see why the average life span of artists is 10 years less than that of engineers. Pretty much everyone with any kind of brain committs suicide in college.
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2 comments:
Maybe your peers aren't idiots or lying. Maybe they're just a little less critical than a professor who is, after all, paid to be critical. Maybe they have good taste, they're just not sharp enough to pick out the bad bits within the good stuff yet.
I think that you're right about the miserable bit, basically. But...I also think that we're learning now. And we'll grow into a place of balance, of knowing which days to put the work first and which days to put it second or even (gasp! horror! shock!) third. It's just that we're not there yet, so it seems like an all-or-nothing thing...and with the pressures there of so many demanding classes, it is an insane balancing act. I just think that it won't always be this crazy, this hard to prioritize. So hang in there, Kenzie. I love you!
So true...even if you compromise by just doing LESS work, and try to do it well and have a healthy life, your work suffers. Because you don't get enough practice. That's how film goes for me, at least. I need to motivate myself to do more extracurricular projects.
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