December 7

As artists, we are open-minded but we need not be gullible. Many of the people purporting to be able to help us shape our craft have very little experience with crafting something themselves. What we are looking for is people who have done what we want to do—not someone who has watched others do it. It feels different to be in the cockpit at Cape Canaveral than it does to watch from the ground. As artists, we must find people who can share actual experience rather than a sanitized, dramatized, glorified, or press-filtered version. We must ask ourselves always, “Am I opening myself or my art to early and improper input, input that is ungrounded or inappropriate?” Another way to put it is: “Do they really know more about what I am doing than I do?”