You can give your subconscious directions. The best way to do this is by setting up structural tension and turning it over to your mind. “Here’s the outcome I want, here’s the current reality right now. Good night, subconscious.” This is giving your mind a job.

“Subconscious, here’s what I’m doing, and your job is to expand this.” I know that can seem silly. But it works, and the next thing you know, your ideas begin to manifest themselves in your piece.

Stephen Sondheim said, “(When) I don’t know what to do, then I go to sleep. I’m a firm believer in all problems being solved in dreams. You wake up in the morning, and it’s solved or it’s on the way to solution.”

As an artist, you can give your subconscious a job. Think of this as working on two levels. On the conscious level, you make decisions, set up structures, think about content, work with forms, and set up structural tension as an essential part of your creative process. We could describe that as the strategy and tactics you generate. Then you turn

Surrealism tried to tap into the Freudian idea of the power of the unconscious. It was a child of the Dada movement, which loved to defy reason and logic. Dada came out of a group of artists’ reaction to World War l and was one of the most interesting periods of art, inventing collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, and sculpture.

Their success was not a factor of identity, but of something more powerful and enduring: the motivation to accomplish the outcomes they wished to create. In other words, they focused upon what they were creating, not upon themselves.

Often, we don’t like the secondary choices. We may not like to practice hour after hour. We may not like doing planning for a film project. We may not like going to dance classes or acting classes. We may not like mem-orizing lines or having to keep in physical shape. We do those things, not for themselves, but for the outcomes they support.

There is no need to grow as an artist unless your vision has grown, your interests have changed or migrated, your restless spirit has taken you to new places to explore, and because you have exhausted the direction you’ve been in. When it comes time to grow or change, and you don’t, you will get stuck. In show business, there is the concept of

Many years ago, leading one of my workshops for artists in NY City, I got on my soapbox and gave a speech about how some people in the room (there were over 100) were not developing the type of discipline they needed to accomplish their aspirations. I knew this to be true for quite a few of the artists. They were relying on their talent, and that