So the point is to take the work seriously but you don’t take yourself too seriously. There’s a riff about this in Stephen Pressfield’s War of Art, where he talks about how amateurs are too precious with their work: “The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing. Too much love can make him choke. The seeming detachment of the professional, the cold-blooded character to his demeanor, is a compensating device to keep him from loving the game so much that he freezes in action.”

visakan veerasamy • Are You Serious?

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When I say serious I

don’t

mean solemn and tedious.

I mean something closer to ‘dynamic persistence’, and a sense of humor is often critical to that. It’s hard to persist for a long time if you ‘take yourself too seriously’. You become rigid, stiff, the opposite of dynamic, and eventually you bang up against something that breaks you one way or ano... See more

Visakan Veerasamy • Are You Serious?

Take the work seriously, but not yourself.

Sari Azout • A Moodboard for People Who Hate Self-Promotion

If your intention is to ‘make art’, then maybe you’ll get a couple of good paintings. You may even get a show or two.

But I think of it this way: I don’t make art. I make things . Framing it like that keeps what I’m doing from becoming precious. And that’s a good thing, because to be precious is to be timid—and that’s bad. Creativity requires attent

Kieran O‘Hare • Following the White- Hot Fire Inside of You

The artist and the professional, on the other hand, have turned a corner in their minds. They have succeeded in stepping back from themselves. They have grown so bored with themselves and so sick of their petty bullshit

Steven Pressfield • Turning Pro

The War Of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle

Steven Pressfield

amazon.com

Cover of The War Of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle

If You Have Writer's Block, Maybe You Should Stop Lying

Sasha Chapin sashachapin.substack.com