Ira Glass, US radio personality and producer-host of the radio and television show This American Life perfectly sums up why so many new artists and writers give up. It’s not a perseverance problem, but something at the heart of why artists and writers enter the field in the first place:
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.
In this interview with Transom – illustrated with examples of Ira’s work from his own killer-taste-poor-performance days – he tells you in detail how he made it past that phase himself. It’s a compelling story.
Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.
James Hamilton
By day I am the Librarian at Edinburgh's Signet Library; by night I am probably best known for my website on the history and psychology of sport, www.morethanmindgames.com. I specialize in psychology; social, media, sports history and the fine arts 1860-1940; Scottish culture and current affairs, and modern politics. Publications and broadcasters I have worked with include: BBC Radio; Sky Television; Channel 4; The Times; and Scotland on Sunday. Current projects include a book tracing the role of association football in the amelioration of British urban life between 1860 and World War II. I also contribute to British culture weblog The Dabbler. As a volunteer I contribute to fundraising for research into cancers of the brain by building websites. I also guide for the National Trust For Scotland. I maintain a small stable of websites including history online hub The Early Modern Intelligencer.
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