Creative work is about experimentation and change.

Over the roughly thirty years that Heron Dance has been published, it has explored several subjects — the human search for meaning, creativity, the human connection to the natural world, gratitude as a way of life and spiritual practice, and, most recently, art and writing inspired by ancient Zen and Taoist hermit poets. Creative work is about experimentation and change.

In recent years that exploration has settled most deeply around art and writing inspired by ancient Zen and Taoist hermit poets — voices that held questions about solitude, impermanence, and creative life long before those questions had names.

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Ed Catmull is President of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studio and author of Creativity Inc. He was interviewed by Tim Ferris for the book The Tools Of Titans.

Ed Catmull: The final film bears no relationship to what we start out with. All our films to begin with suck. We had to start over internally with Toy Story II. We had to do it with Ratatouille. All of our films to begin with suck.

Tim: Why do you say that? Just that the rough draft is really rough?

Ed: This is the big misconception that people have. That in the beginning a new film is the baby version of the final film when in fact the final film bears no relationship with what you start with. What we’ve found is that the first version always sucks. I don’t mean this because we are self-effacing or modest. I mean it in the sense that they really do suck.

People who can't live with failure shouldn’t be artists, shouldn’t engage in creative work. We need them at the post office, where they do the same thing, day after day, year after year, decade after decade. The creative process is about writing your book for years and then throwing it in the fire one night because you know it is no good. And the creative process is about starting again the next morning and doing it right. And then, when you finally get it written so that you feel okay about it, no one wants to publish it. It gets rejected and rejected. But you keep trying because you believe in it. You believe you have something to say. So yes, there's ego involved. And maybe some alcohol. Maybe you need a little alcohol to believe that the world is wrong and you are right.

Rodney Elrod: Why do you think writers like Pynchon, Salinger, and Faulkner go into hiding for so long?

Harry Crews: This may sound a little hippy-dippy, but all writers of any significance are tremendously sensitive. That is to say, sensitive to criticism, to social pressures, and I think that the people you mentioned do that, though none of them would admit it, because they recognize their own intense vulnerability, which they don’t deal with out there, so they hide.

Talent. Ahhhhh, everyone talks about talent. Talent helps. Listen, get all the talent you can. But writing is guts and its courage. You cannot have a failure of courage. Everybody in the world is telling you you’re no good, and you can’t do it, and it’s not going to work. You’ve got to keep talking to yourself, saying, “Come on, son. Come on . . .”
- Erik Bledsoe, Getting Naked with Harry Crews

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