You can do it.
You know how to do it.
You are doing it.
What keeps you from doing it fully are two sticky myths about creating that are hard to shake.
1). The “greats” are greater than you. We’re all human. We’re all talented and capable and brave and scared and strong and weak. The problem is we generally berate ourselves for having these human qualities and erroneously think the people who “made it” don’t share the same flawed characteristics we seem to have in abundance. They do. As do your parents. And teachers. And lovers. And heroes.
I had a student who was on a TV set recently and had an “Ah-Ha” moment. He witnessed 4 very famous actors struggle, call out for lines they couldn’t remember, work with script in hand continuously, distrust their instincts and generally figure it out while they were doing it.
Like what we teach in class.
Several times an actor would want to do something, stop himself and the director would call out, “What did you want to do there?” The actor would say something like, “Walk over there!” And the director would proclaim, “Well why didn’t you do that?”
Just like in class.
On set everyone is just figuring it out like you are. No one knows. You gain knowledge by doing it and the more you do it the more you know it and become it.
But you’ll never know all of it, because it’s always going to be new and that’s exciting and what also makes it scary.
2). If I had more time I’d . . .
I’m not sure you would.
An actor said to me recently, “If I had time ”“ like 12 hours a day ”“ to devote to acting then I’d really be doing it.”
No, you wouldn’t. No one, anywhere, is really devoting all their time to one thing.
I just came back from a trip to Croatia and walked the grounds (and castles) of King’s Landing where they partly film Game Of Thrones. (I hadn’t previously seen the show.)
So I finally had a weekend free when I got home and thought, I’ll have like 20 hours to write! And then I turned on Game Of Thrones.
More like Game Over! I wrote maybe 10 minutes the entire weekend. Womp. Womp.
It’s not true that having more time in a day to do things makes you better at things. Sometimes only having 2 hours a day and really letting that 2 hours be a focused practice is more valuable than 12 hours where you do everything but the thing you want to do.
So don’t keep using that as an excuse. So what if you have two jobs and you feel you have no time for anything else right now? Better to be working and living life and meeting people than thinking, “If I had all the time those two jobs are taking away from me, I’d devote fully to my art.” Chances are, you’d probably only use a third of that time, probably less. And all the things that you’re learning while not doing your art is your art.
Of course we have to dedicate time to learning and growing and committing to a career. So find a way to make things work even if you don’t have as much time as you think you should. Don’t confuse where you are with the illusion that your life (and career) would look drastically different if you had all the time in the world.
Break the myths and realize you’re already in the midst of doing the thing that you thought was supposed to look a different way before you started doing it!