Wednesday, June 6, 2018

A Stroke of Genius



“Write killer content.”I read when I opened a mentoring site.

“Yeah right!” I screamed. “Like we intend to write crap!”

 “Knock my socks off, “ we hear. Remember the judges on #Project Runway told their designers, to “Knock my socks off. Make it work!”

It’s this way folks, nobody sets out to write tripe. Everybody wants to write, paint, design clothing, or whatever, making it killer stuff.

 However, art and life is a process.

And this competition stuff is for the birds—although I doubt if birds are competitive, except for food, oh yes, and mates. Guess it’s the same with people. One tries to make a living with their creative endeavor—that translates to food, and finding a mate—well, that’s universal.

I learned this from Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love). She looked at ancient thoughts on creativity and found that long ago people thought that “Genius” did not lie in the person, but it was like hidden in the walls, and once in a while, it would whisper to the artist.  That was the stroke of genius.

Therefore being brilliant did not lie on the artist's shoulders alone. The artist couldn’t take all the credit when his work was good, neither could he take all the blame when it was bad.

Write for the joy of it whether the genius visits or not.

Ta Da,
Joyce

P.S. I am also posting on writing and other subjects, (Brunch for the Soul, Life on the Farm, and Travel) on http://www.plottwist747.com