then stop working together.Life shrinks or expands in proportion
to one’s courage.
ANAÏS NIN• A fledgling photographer is greatly encouraged by
her teacher’s interest in her work. She botches
developing one roll of film and then quits the class,
claiming it was boring.
In dealing with our creative U-turns, we must first of all
extend ourselves some sympathy. Creativity is scary, and in
all careers there are U-turns. Sometimes these U-turns are
best viewed as recycling times. We come up to a creative
jump, run out from it like a skittish horse, then circle the
field a few times before trying the fence again.
Typically, when we take a creative U-turn we are doubly
shamed: first by our fear and second by our reaction to it.
Again, let me say it helps to remember that all careers have
them.
For two years in my mid-thirties I wrote arts coverage for
the Chicago Tribune. In this capacity, I talked to Akira
Kurosawa, Kevin Klein, Julie Andrews, Jane Fonda, Blake
Edwards, Sydney Pollack, Sissy Spacek, Sigourney Weaver,
Martin Ritt, Gregory Hines, and fifty-odd more. I talked to
most of them about discouragement—which meant talking
to them about U-turns. As much as talent, the capacity to
avoid or recoup from creative U-turns distinguished their