"Only now I the one who say "keep on keepin' on!" to new girls. I show them how the dialogue journal work. You know how you write to teacher 'n she talkin' on paper and you could SEE your talk coming back to you when the teacher answer you back. I mean thas what had made me really like writing in the beginning, knowing my teacher gonna write me back when I talk to her." - Push, by Sapphire (film adaption Precious won Oscars and Sundance Film Festival awards)
In 1977, Ramona Lofton moved to New York City with twenty dollars to her name. She had wished to become a writer, but instead wound up working in the sex industry around Times Square. She'd changed her name to Sapphire because: "I had read somewhere that the rays emitted by sapphires can change the molecular structure of other gemstones--and that was exactly what I wanted to do with my life."
Later she became a remedial reading teacher in Harlem and the Bronx. With not much more than a pen and sheer talent, her first book "Push" was published by Knopf -- and she received a whopping $500,000 two-book contract. (Source: Wikipedia, Answers.com)
Alicia Keys been singing since she was four. Fortunately, singing isn't too expensive. When she started expressing an interest in piano, it wasn't easy for her family to pay for lessons, let alone get her a piano. "A friend ended up not needing this piano and gave it to us," she explained. She went on to say that people always ask what her biggest break was and her answer is: "That piano." (Source: Iconoclasts, Sundance Channel)
We believe that talent is latent (catch that anagram?) within everyone. Creativity isn't the purview of a few with the studio budgets and mass media connections.
When the Internet started catching on like wildfire in the late 1990s, I was enthused about how much freedom of expression would now be not only possible, but feasible to amateurs (etymology: "one who has a taste for (something)","lover of").
Fast forward to 2010: Sometimes there's a subtle impression given that one needs to wait to produce. Consuming and surfing are nearly free, but the means of production seem to balloon as our expectations for polished content escalates.
We can't possibly start our creative project because _____ (fill in the blank). Until we get the venture capital funding. Until the film is financed. Until we get the recording studio up and running. Until we get the game designer hired. Until we get Final Cut Pro and Adobe Illustrator. Until we secure a job at Electronic Arts or Pixar.
Deftly postponing and deferring the creativity that is bursting to come forth right now.... until we get the ____.
In 1999, I was the CTO at a venture-backed Internet startup. Among our collective mistakes, the one that sticks with me is that we believed we needed the next round of funding to "really" accomplish what we envisioned. I ought to mention that we had $1.4 million in funding, although it didn't seem like "enough".
It was too late to save that particular startup, yet around the same time as dot-coms were imploding, I was fortunate to meet both Alistair Cockburn and Jim Highsmith and they opened my eyes to an iterative, agile approach to completing projects. Not only did it seem that this was the process for the future, it also struck me as the the most engrossing, engaging and effective way to see a software project come into fruition bit by bit with a feedback loop that sought to collaborate with the users.
Fast-forward. I've had a story kicking around my mind two years ago to date yesterday -- August 8, '08 -- opening ceremonies, Beijing Olympics a Chinese-American 19-year-old film student named Mai is birthed in my imagination. Since then an intricate cast of characters has joined her from Iris circa 1915 Montparnasse to Sam in present-day New Orleans.
There's an inner voice... call it The Perfectionist that feels we ought to wait until we have all the resources to tell this story "properly." For some people, that's an option. More than likely, for us, there's a grant, or a patron, or even a fundable business plan that we could pitch that MIGHT line up all the resources we'd need in one fell swoop. Perhaps. We have the option to wait.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, while homeless, wrote poetic tags on Manhattan walls, sold $5 handmade postcards and painted on salvaged materials he found in the Lower East Side. He didn't wait. He couldn't wait.
Precious, the young, urban protagonist in Sapphire's novel, is
advised by her case worker to quit school, give up her baby and get a
job as a home care aid assistant. Luckily, Precious' teacher spots her
potential, and intervenes with something as simple as a journal -- one
in which the two pass poems and notes back and forth to each other.
The iterative process is like that.
It starts with a blank page. We pass notes back and forth to each other. Building a body of work, together. Beginning with the barest of skeletal frames that's minimally functional. Starting where you are with what you have. Evolving, expanding from there.
"If you are not embarrassed with your first version, you've released too late." - Reid Hoffman, founder LinkedIn
Bonus: In this current project, Latent Talent: Leaping from de Poverty Line, we aim to show that even on federal minimum wage salary cusping the poverty threshold, anyone can create compelling self-expression because inspiration isn't dependent on income.
p.s. Mai, guest blogger, is announcing her own blog tomorrow/soon. She's had quite the flurry of life and death experience lately. We've both realized we haven't been as risky "real" as we could be. Of late, I've pulled away from astrology as I'm not too intent on knowing where fate lies, and rather create fate, yet I did happen to read this today which sums up love and creativity (is there a difference?) aptly:
"In fact that is probably what you are going to start learning about big time this summer—exactly what love is all about.
It’s really the ability to show yourself, allow yourself to be revealed as you really are with all your strengths and weaknesses. Being able to love deeply means being vulnerable, and when you are vulnerable you are bound to make strange choices. Nobody can criticize or guide you along this new path, mainly because there are no mistakes when you are learning to open yourself up. Opening yourself up romantically is of the same nature as allowing your creative talents to be developed."
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