Sometimes a Good Notion

Do Something For Your Art Everyday

A lifetime ago I lived in NY and worked for Susan Batson at the Black Nexxus Studios.  It was an incredibly dynamic place.  I remember that on a cork board somewhere in the office there was a little piece of paper tacked on that said “Do Something For Your Art Every Day.”  I don’t know if Susan came up with it or if she got it from somebody else, but seeing that little message daily made it stay with me.

I think about it now because in talking with my students during the last day of class I found myself repeating those words to them.  I have a student who has incredible work ethic; he’s producing a web series, putting out an episode a week. It’s an astonishing amount of work, but procrastination limits the quality of the work. So I told him about Susan, about the little refrain on the cork board, and that finding, perhaps 1 hour of the day that he dedicates to just working on honing his craft would make a world of difference in his work and in his life.  As soon as I said it I thought about this blog and how I hadn’t posted in almost a week.  I thought about how easy it is to become busy and how brilliant it was for that little refrain to be tacked on to a cork board where everyone could see it multiple times a day.  You couldn’t forget to do something for your art because there it was to remind you. The brilliance of which I’m sure was not accidental considering its source.

So I’ve typed it up, cut it up, and taped it right onto my computer so I never forget that doing something for my art every day is exactly why I started Sometimes a Good Notion.