The week ahead

We’ll talk together at 1pm today.

In advance of that, think about the week ahead and invent some plans for yourself.

Spread out over a piece of (real) paper—a big one if possible, or pages in your journal.

Think about (and write about/diagram/sketch/doodle):


  • What sorts of activities do you want to participate in this week? Inventing, outlining, sharing, reflecting, refining. 

  • In what forms might those activities live? Solo rehearsal? Meeting with a peer? Talk with Mark? Sharing in our full group on Wednesday?

  • Think from the POINT OF VIEW of your sense of yourself as an artist: Think about what will feel good to you. Think about what will be beneficial to your having a full sense of an active, engaged creative practice. Think about how you might be able to feel part of a team, if that’s desirable.

  • Think now from the POINT OF VIEW of the PROJECT: what does it need? Where is it? What kinds of nurturing does it require? Where does it need to be fed? Where does it need to be pruned? Where are the places that it still needs to be seeded (where is it bare...or patchy)?

  • Make a handful of goals for your work this week. Spend some time thinking about what steps you need to take to begin to make progress toward each goal. What can you actually DO?

  • Look at your calendar. Think about your days. Block out the time that you want to commit to working on this project. How many hours total? How to distribute those hours? Make some commitments to yourself about time. (Admit that you have other things in your life that take time. Make commitments to them, too. And put together a calendar for your week.) If possible, chart out a version of your week that lets you spend enough time on every activity that you listed (above) so that you stand a decent chance of meeting your goals.

  • Leave a lot of time at the end of the week for revision, to account for inefficiency (it’s ART!), and for following up on NEW IDEAS.

  • Consider what you need to do to hold yourself accountable for your vision of your week. Who can you promise to share with? Who might you stay in touch with through your workday to share what you are doing or have done? Who might you have a tea or coffee break with? Write all this in.

  • Put all this on display. You might want to organize it a little bit. You also might want to put up some post it notes or signs for yourself to remind you of some of your goals. Make a workspace that encourages your working.
And then...you can get to work.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Time Containers

Name the projects you are going to do today (“replace the Bundt-cake monologue,” “Outline the battle scene, “ “Build and test the airplane puppet” ... etc.) Each project wants to be achievable and specific and make a real contribution to your project. So “have ideas” is a bad project assignment. As is “fix second act.” Assign yourself an amount of time to contain your work on each of these projects: — build and test airplane puppet. 45 minutes. — replace the Bundt-cake monologue. 90 minutes. — outline for battle scene. 30 minutes. Allow yourself 5 minutes at the beginning of each task to size up the problem. If there are multiple ways of attacking it, take a few minutes to identify these (or some of them). BUT THEN PICK ONE method and use THAT. Save a few minutes at the end of the time period to “show” or “document” or “observe” what you have achieved. At the end of each period, just sit with what you did for a few minutes, before you move on. In this moment of reflecti...
Read more

Keep Singing

Keep singing. Jonas Mekas, who died last year, is a crucial figure in the American avant-garde and the world of downtown New York. You should read about him here and  here . You could look at his films, too, but even if you don't like them (you might not), you should read on. At the end of his life, he would tell people "Keep Singing!" And when he died, some of his friends made this tribute to him. It's a five minute film , but it gives you a little sense of the perspective that age brings (he was over 95 when he died) and what it feels like for a young artist to have lived through hard times. In particular, I'm struck by his hunger  for culture and by his willingness to look at how work was being made in his field, film, and issue a call to  blow it all up, because he and his friends felt as if they could make film that was more lively, more vital. So, today the assignment is: Keep singing. What does that mean to you? (It might mean actually singing. I...
Read more

Struggling and conceptualizing Struggling

There’s an interesting article in Today’s New York Times about artists working in These Times. You might read it if it isn’t going to get in the way of your working. I’m interested in it because it acknowledges what we all know: that there is something that many of us experience as debilitating  in this moment. Living in a time when so many people are getting sick and our leaders are so totally lost and our futures all seem uncertain and the hideous inequalities of our cultures are all hanging out there...it’s easy for us to want to crawl up in a ball. Or go volunteer to do something that could actually help . I’m thinking about this on three ways—but there are (I’m sure) more than three ways to think about this. First, it was largely the failures of our culture to imagine, to listen well, and to respond creatively that got us into this. Those of us who have more finely honed skills in imagining, listening, responding, and making are really needed now. We may not be making ...
Read more