[DIY TV] Four Pieces of Inspiration

This is a series of blog posts about the inspiration, business, and process of making our little show, Post-Nup. Our goal is to share experience and help anyone who wants to make a show (or really, anything).

If you’re an artist, consider yourself officially out of excuses.

The cost to produce your material, distribute it widely, and reach out to potential fans is no longer a real barrier. Sure, you can’t start with Avatar, but it’s easier than ever to make the little films that could eventually get you there.

But, that’s probably not what’s really stopping you (or me). What stops us is fear: that our work will be rejected, that it won’t be as good as what we’ve done before, that we were never good enough to do it in the first place, etc., etc., blah blah blah.

If you need some inspiration (or a sharp kick in the ass), here are 4 pieces (interviews, speeches, and books) that have inspired me (or kicked me in the ass, sharply).

1. Ira Glass on the Taste Gap
Ira Glass is the creator and host of the radio show This American Life. In an interview with CurrentTV, he tells us that the only way to bridge the gap between the stuff you like (your taste) and what you are capable of (your skill) is to work really hard, for a really long time (inspired yet?). I really appreciated the end of this segment, where he actually plays some of his earlier radio work, which as he says, is actually kinda crappy.

You can watch the full interview on storytelling here.

2. Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk on The Genius
After her book “Eat, Pray, Love” became a runaway bestseller, Elizabeth Gilbert spent the next year terrified that she would never do anything that successful again.  Her talk is about that fear and how she got over it.

One of my favorite things about this talk is the performance of the talk itself. I also liked her debunking of the romantic view we have of the alcoholic writer or drug-addict musician.

Her core point is that we can (and should) look at inspiration as something that is outside of us.  She loves the Greek idea of “The Genius” as being something outside of a us – like a metaphysical muse.  It’s not your fault whether the muse shows up or not.  Your job is just to show up to work.

3. Seth Godin’s Linchpin

I’ve been reading Seth’s blogs and books for almost 10 years. Nothing has influenced the marketing strategy for my consulting company more than his writing. Since he approaches things from a business/marketing perspective, his work inspires both the entrepreneur and the artist (and more precisely, doesn’t see a difference between the two).

In Linchpin, Godin declares war on your “lizard brain”, the part of you that only knows how to fight or flee…the part of you that is petrified of public speaking or criticism from your peers. It’s the “lizard brain” (both yours and the rest of the world’s) that keeps you doing mediocre work, year after year; because avoiding risk is safe and comfortable.

The world wants you to be a faceless, replaceable cog in the vast machinery of production–but if you choose, and you work at it, you can become the sort of person we really need, an indispensable linchpin, a person who matters. The marketplace needs and embraces artists, creatives, initiators, challengers and movers. You have that skill, the challenge is unearthing it.

4. Hugh MacLeod’s Ignore Everybody

One of my favorite artist stories of all time.  Hugh got a job as a low-level advertising executive in New York about 15 years ago.  By his own account, he was mediocre at it, and instead spent his time doodling.  Since he liked how portable they were, he began doodling exclusively on business cards.  A decade later, his “cartoons on the back of business cards” have turned him into an iconic artist.

His book is a an anthem to the “long tail” of art.

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the biz card format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn’t I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?

Pick a niche.  Then, avoid the art scene or the “props” of being an artist and focus on the fucking work.  Here is a fantastic passage about what to do with your idea:

You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us.

And asking close friends never works quite as well as you hope, either. It’s not that they deliberately want to be unhelpful. It’s just they don’t know your world one millionth as well as you know your world, no matter how hard they try, no matter how hard you try to explain.

Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they don’t want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They like things the way they are, that’s how they love you- the way you are, not the way you may become.