Don’t Apologize. Don’t! Don’t Do it!

Unless, of course, you did something wrong. Then by all means, get your grovel on.

But don’t do that thing where you apologize for the horribleness of your creative work right before you let someone see it.

Back when I used to study theatre, I had this teacher, Ms. Deaver, aka Ms. Diva because she unapologetically carried herself like one. She taught Voice and Speech. This wasn’t an artsy acting class where you get to talk about feelings and there’s more than one answer to every question. Voice and speech was technical and practical. It was her job to make sure we knew how to speak clearly, loudly and effectively (kinda important when you’re on the stage.) As a teacher she was stern and accepted no excuses. But she especially wanted no apologizing!

Don’t say, “I’m not very good” or “You’re going to hate it.” Don’t hunch your shoulders and shy away from eye contact as if to say – without saying a word, “I’m unworthy of your time. You may pretend I’m not here if you'd like.” And dear God, whatever you do… Don’t. Mumble.

All this is very obvious when it comes to the performing arts. Whatever you project, the audience will pick up on it. If you’re uncomfortable, the audience will be uncomfortable right along with you. But if you project confidence, well, in the best case scenario the audience will all together forget that you’re acting.

But this “no apologizing” credo isn’t just for the creative types who have to face their audience because it isn’t only performers who do it. I know breaking the habit is easier said then done. I catch myself at it more often than I'd like. While there are several reasons many of us creative types have this tendency, there are also reasons we should resist the instinct.

To paraphrase Erykah Baduh, we’re artists, and we’re sensitive about our shit. Often times we either believe that we completely and hopelessly suck or that we are just barely hanging on to being mediocre. Even if that is true, that doesn’t mean you won’t improve. It's just a fact of life that, unless you’re a prodigy, there’s a good chance you’re going to do something poorly before you do it well. Rather than knocking yourself down a peg, approach your talent with the understanding that the more you apply yourself to your craft, the better you’ll get at it.

The humble act. It’s good to be humble. No one is too high up on the totem pole that they can’t be taken down a notch or two, or ten or a hundred. It’s good to remember that no matter where you are in the pecking order, but there is such a thing as taking it too far; namely, when it becomes almost an embarrassment to admit that you’re capable. If you excel at something, allow yourself to acknowledge that at least every once and a while.

A way to shield ourselves against criticism. If we tell ourselves we suck first—or better yet, if we tell the person evaluating us so, then it won’t hurt as much when someone else says it. It’s along the same lines as quitting something so that you don’t have to fail at it. Counter-productive. I say we should embrace (constructive) criticism. It’s how we learn to do that thing we’re already awesome at even better.

An attempt to garner sympathy. Trying this can actually work against you. Sure, the first few times you might be able to get an, “Aaw, honey. You don’t suck. That was terrific!” But after a while, it gets old and people will get tired to having to reassure you if you come at them like that every time (or at least I get tired of it). And when you venture beyond your circle of family and friends, I tend to think that professionals are not going to take pity on you because you present yourself as meek and unworthy. If you think you’re incompetent, people will be more than happy to agree with you.

There’s a reason why people who we might think have only a modicum of talent manage to become rich and famous, and that reason is a little something I like to call confidence. Okay, maybe that’s not all there is to it, but you gotta admit it is a major factor. It takes a lot of confidence (or delusional thinking, sometimes interchangeable with confidence) to get on stage and sing to packed house when you can barely hold a note. Not that—ahem, I have any particular performer in mind. (shifty eyes, shifty eyes)

This is one of those things where it’s not even about being the best. It’s about carrying yourself as if you are. If you can’t see your value, then how can you expect anyone else to? Or worse, if you don’t see your value, what’s to stop someone who does see it from taking advantage of you and your abilities?

So don’t just do your thing. Own it.

If you can’t do that, then you know what? Fake it ‘til you make it.

In other news, the thing about practicing the technical aspects of drawing for hours everyday is that it isn’t terribly non-boring. I bribe myself into sitting down and drawing thirty ears in a row by putting on some TV series that I never knew much about or started watching but for whatever reason couldn’t keep up with and have been meaning to get back into for the past of years. So far I’ve watched Dr. Who, some of Farscape, most of Dollhouse, and I just finished season two of Big Love, and it has definitely given me good reason to sit and draw for several hours at a time.

My favorite quote from the show so far:

“If I could open up a vein and drain the half of my blood that is yours, I’d gladly do it.”

- said coolly and quietly by Bill Henrickson to his rodent of a father

Ooo! Burn!

That Other “Thing”

May for me was a month of inconsistent blogging, which kinda of snowballed from April being a month of just barely consistent blogging. I think I have a good reason for that. My brain had been slowly shifting from one gear to another, and this leads me to a question I want to ask you all.

Fellow writers, I know writing is your “thing,” but do any of you have another “thing?” A “thing” that you can be just as passionate about as writing, and maybe even sorta good at if you committed to it as much you did writing?

My other “thing” is art. I like to draw and stuff. Sometimes the things I draw and stuff doesn’t suck. But I’ve never consistently focused on drawing and stuff enough to be consistently good. (At least that’s the reason for it I like to tell myself.) The art thing has always been the thing I’ve pushed to the side. Writing was my main thing. Drawing and stuff was the other thing.

The exact opposite of my relationship to writing, part of why I’ve been inconsistent with the drawing and stuff stems from the fact that I’ve never had much confidence in my artistic skills.

Like any deeply rooted issue worth its salt, I’ve traced this problem back to my childhood. Specifically to Cyclops.

When I was about 12, I attempted to draw Cyclops from X-Men: The Animated Series. Looking at that drawing today, I’m like, “Hey, not bad for kid,” but my junior high self was SO COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY TRAUMATIZED that my Cyclops didn’t look exactly like the Cyclops on my TV screen that from that day forth I NEVER attempted do draw someone else’s character for the rest of my adolescence, and most of my adult life. (And he was my least favorite X-Men. Imagine if I’d tried to draw Gambit! I would have never picked up a pencil ever again!)

There’s the culprit. The rat bastard.

Basically, I’ve had a restricting, I’m-going-to-fail-and-fail-miserably type of fear when it comes to drawing ever since. It has kept me from practicing as much as I should have because instead of taking the (minimal) risk and going for the gusto, I’ve often given up on it on the first indication that I wasn’t going to be any good at it. More often, that mentality has kept me from even starting a project, or even a sketch.

It’s a habit I’m trying to break. As Fran from Strictly Ballroom would say, “A life lived in fear is a life half lived.” I think the best way to break that mentality is to actively work on the mechanics and basic skills that I’m lacking so that I don't have lack of skills" as an excuse to suck and therefore an excuse to give up.

The other best way is to stop thinking about it and just do it.

So I’m making this my summer of art. Starting last month, I’ve enrolled myself in drawing boot camp, a summer intensive if you will. (Of course, I don’t actually have any money for such a thing so it’s just me at the kitchen table with a sketchbook and a selection of books about drawing). I feel I owe it to my other thing to let it have a turn at being the main thing.

Summer goals:

· Draw everyday (Well, every weekday. The weekend is reserved for writing.)

· Improve at drawing the head, face, and expressions

· Ditto hands and feet

· Finally learn perspective beyond 1-point, now that I seem to have found a book on the topic that doesn’t make my eyes cross.

Hopefully by the end of summer my level of suck will have significantly decreased. And perhaps more importantly, I hope to have made such a habit of drawing from doing it every day that the thought of a blank canvas doesn’t make me want to run in the opposite direction as fast as humanly possible.

The result of my decision to do this, though, is that my blogging may continue to be erratic these next couple of months. For once, I’m putting my other thing on the front burner, but if all goes well, by the end of it I’ll have learned out how to let my two things co-exists equally.

And because my pride won’t allow me to have Cyclops up there as the only representation of my drawing, here’s something a little more recent:

Still much room for improvement, but - le sigh - isn’t there always?

Doctor Who’da Thunk It?

If I’d had any idea what Doctor Who was about all this time, I probably would have started watching it a lot sooner than a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes, not having cable really sucks. You know, being all out of the loop and having to be entertained by books instead of by flipping through 500 random channels.

But oh well. I’m catching up now and that’s all that matters. I spent all of Saturday in front of my laptop watching a significant chunk of season series four and those bits that came between four and five. I barely got out of bed all day and never did get around to changing out if my pajamas.

That was a lot of Doctor Who. I might have overdosed on it. I definitely felt like a zombie by the time I looked up and realized that I was watching Doctor Who in the dark.

That’s what I call a low energy day…because that feels better than calling myself a lazy, no good slacker. I’m going to let myself believe that Saturday was actually a productive day because the whole reason I started watching this show was in preparation for reading this book:

...which chronicles, through email correspondence, two years in the creative life of Russell T. Davies as he shapes series four of the show while heading towards the end of his reign as the show’s head writer and executive producer. When I learned of this book, it sounded like a useful read for a writer such as myself. But seeing as how it apparently divulges all the behind-the-scenes story making, I thought, “Hmm, maybe I should actually watch the show first since I have a DEEP AND ABIDING HATRED OF SPOILERS (even for stuff I'd never thought to watch). Oh, and I guess that watching it will help me understand what all Mr. Davies is talking about, too.” So without having a clue as to what it was about, I signed into Netflix and clicked “play” on the first episode, which led to this…

That there is a depiction of instant fandom. And sure, I’m a couple of years late on this, but I now know what I want to dress up as for Halloween.

Anyway, this month has to be the opposite of Saturday. Doing nothing but watching TV all day really did make me feel like a bigger slacker than usual. So I’m making a “to do” list and everything. Who knows? I may even have time between Doctor Who episodes to check a couple of items off of it.

Twice As Stylish As Before!

Special thanks to Jen, conqueror of possums (...or maybe ambassador to possums?), for giving me a Stylish Blogger Award. I really appreciate it. Thanks for letting me feel the love!

Now, I don’t have all my blogger etiquette down, thus I’m not sure what the etiquette is for when you’ve gotten a certain award twice in a row. So I’ve decided to forge my own rule and instead of doing a repeat of the same thing I did last time (because do you really care to hear seven more things about me? I mean... Can you handle even more awesomeness of me?!) I’ll post something that I think Jen will appreciate.

Recently, the original voice cast of Invader Zim got together to do a stage reading of two unproduced and therefore never before seen – or heard – Invader Zim scripts: “Day of da Spookies” and “Mopiness of Doom.” Here’s the article about it, and here are the videos:

Enjoy!

EENJOOOY! (I think that was my Zim impression.)

I haven’t watched them yet, but I don’t see how this can not turn out awesome.

Random Tandem Wednesdays: VHS Cassettes and Other Things of My Youth

Going into this blogging thing, I told myself, “Cacy, don’t be random. Embrace focus.” Alas and alack, to be focused is not my nature. It was only a matter of time before my randomness broke through and I diverged from topics relating to writing and books. I can try to say, hey, this random thing relates to writing-slash-books because of XYZ, but I decided not to lie to myself, or you. Sometimes, you just gotta let yourself be random—I’ll at least try to relegate it to Wednesdays.

So this weekend, I was reading my six-year-old niece the story of Beauty and the Beast from this big book of fairy tales. I had to explain to her that there are a lot of different versions of the story because she kept comparing it to the Disney movie. She went further to say, “We used to watch it on…What do you call it? The black thing.”

“Black thing?” I said.

“You know, it’s black and it has the white circles.” She traced shapes in the air.

“Oh. A video tape.”

“Yeah. We used to watch the video tape, but the thing you put it in broke.”

“You mean a VCR.”

“Yeah, a VCR.”

As an experiment, just to double check, I pointed to the entertainment center across from us and asked, “What do you call that thing?”

She looked at me like I was weird. “A DVD player.”

“And what do you put inside one of those.”

“A DVD.”

It is the end of an era, people. Goodbye, VHS and VCR. I knew you well. Yeah, okay, so they’ve been out of the picture for a while, but there’s nothing like a conversation with the generation who are going to forget that the technology of your youth ever existed to really drive the point home.

Although I do need to find myself a functioning VCR. Cleaning out the garage a few months ago, I found a video tape labeled “Cacy’s Cartoons.” Pull it out of its cardboard case, and there’s a second label (written on in pink marker) that reads, “Don’t record over! This means you!!! Cartoons only!!! With Cacy’s permission!!! So stop if you’re thinking about it!!!”

I meant business. You could tell by all the exclamation points. I need to find out what’s on it. It could be the Spiderman series from the 90s (which was my favorite) or some of the shows from ABC’s One Saturday Morning Block (Pepper Anne, Bump in the Night maybe even - dare I think it - REBOOT!). Though I’m hoping it will contain some of the really random and obscure cartoons that I’m sure no one but me remembers even though I can still sing their theme songs (Ned’s Newt, Stickin’ Around, Science Court).

Gosh, I love cartoons.

Speaking of which, are Saturday morning cartoons a thing of the past? On cable there’s Cartoon Network, Nick Toons, Toon Disney, Boomerang, and what seems to be a plethora of channels that allow 24/7 access to cartoons. I was a dedicated Saturday-morning-cartooner. I was up before the sun to catch those cartoons no one else watched because they only aired at 5am on Saturday (Sky Dancers, Dragon Ball – that’s Dragon Ball, not Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon before it got all popular and moved to a later time that conflicted with my other shows so I had to be like, sorry Pokemon, I choose Spiderman.)

I even watched the lesser Sunday morning cartoons that came on the one channel that thought they could carve a niche for themselves by putting their kid’s programming on Sundays instead of Saturdays. (I remember something about teens who turned into cars to fight evil. It wasn’t very good, but I watched it.)

My cartoon watching wasn’t just a weekend hobby. Oh no, I had my before school cartoons (The Mask, Sailor Moon, Mummies Alive <--AWESOMENESS!). I had my after school cartoons (Gummy Bears, Darkwing Duck – look out! – TaleSpin, Gargoyles), even though I wasn’t allowed to watch TV after school because I was supposed to be doing my homework. But when you have a passion you do what you have to.

When I got to high school, and none of my friends watched cartoons anymore, I was still committed and the cartoons were still awesome (Recess, Powerpuff Girls, Invader Zim, Batman Beyond, Invasion America – where’s book two, Spielberg!?! Where is book two!?!).

I didn’t realize what to call my love affair with cartoons until I was in college and a creative writing teacher wanted the class to do presentations on what we were obsessed with. The night before my turn to present, I honestly and truly thought I had nothing to call an obsession. Until, well after midnight, I looked around my room. I had stuff like this taped to my headboard:

(I can’t believe I still have that, by the way.)

And stuff like this on my wall:

(Click here to make your own Powerpuff Girl! or Guy–which would technically be a Rowdyruff Boy, I guess.)

And my bed looked like this:

(Boy, sometimes I forget what a big dork I am until I dig up a picture like this.)

And on my TV was Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, which was the station my TV was on about 50% of the time. (It was on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, another 30%). Needless to say, I realized what I should do my presentation on.

I miss the days when network television offered a wide variety of cartoons (in the allotted time spots). These days, if you don't have cable it's like cartoons don't exist anymore. I don't have cable. I'm not so up-to-date on the latest in animated television, but I still love cartoons. I was so excited to hear that Genndy Tartakovsky (almost spelled it right without having to look it up!) had a new series that I got the season pass on itunes. I cannot wait for Nick's new Avatar series (and my family and friends had to endure a two-year tirade from me on how bad the movie was going to be--it started the moment I found out Shyamalan was writing, directing and producing it). I think a Venture Bros movie would be too much awesome for one screen and I'll be first in line to see it. And look what my sister got me for Christmas:

I’m starting to think I’ll never grow up.

Quote of the Week:

“It’s pink, and it stinks like cake!” – My six-year-old niece.

Why is this the Quote of the Week? Because it sounds like something Invader Zim would say. (In case you couldn't tell, I'm something of a fan...)