Whenever I want to tell a story, whether it be written or in film, I always forget about my past feelings and experiences and focus on that of other characters. Although, in the Michael Rabiger reading, ‘You and the creative process’, he emphasises that you need to learn the core of you to get better at your craft. I actually often do the opposite, and try to avoid stories and characters that are relevant to my life, which I have never really noticed until now. I think I’m scared of not being able to portray something important to me in an authentic way, so I just avoid it. This is probably something I have to tackle during this semester. “You cannot excel as an artist and stay in hiding”.
The “just do it” approach that Rabiger discusses, has been evident in a lot of the class exercises we have done in the first two weeks of this class. I have always been quite afraid of this sort of format of working, because I prefer things to be complete and perfect before I show them to people. But with these exercises we usually only have a few minutes to think and write and then present them straight after, which really makes me anxious, and I absolutely hate it, but I know it will be beneficial to my creative process if I embrace it.