Don't Be Afraid to Ask

My son Ben is a singer/songwriter. Last week, he traveled to Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest music festival, one of the biggest gatherings of indie musicians in the country. Ben was there to make connections and learn, but he did bring a guitar. One night he went into one of the many bars in downtown Austin (all of them with a stage and sound equipment) and saw that the stage was empty. So he found the manager and asked if he could play for awhile, and the manager said yes! So Ben and his friend Jeremy played for an hour during the SXSW festival, and made some tip money. All because he had the nerve to ask. By the way, you can download Ben's CD, "Soft Watches and Altered States," on itunes, or buy the CD from Amazon.com or CDbaby.com. Just search for the CD title. When I first started in television programming, I didn't know anyone in the business outside of HBO. I knew that if I was going to learn, I needed to make connections outside of my company. I sent letters (this was in the days before e-mail) to people I admired in the business asking if they could give me 20 minutes of their time to answer some questions. I met several people in the programming business by doing this, including the VP of Programming for USA, David Kenin, and Bob Greenway, who later became my boss at Golf Channel. Again, this only happened because I asked. Creating content is a collaborative business. Even if you write, direct, and star in everything yourself, you will still need people to help you get your content distributed. Whether you're hoping a network executive will sign you, or you want frieends to forward your video so it goes viral, in every case you need to reach out to people. People will tell you "no" a lot in the entertainment business, but if you don't ask for what you want, you have no chance to get a "yes." Don't be afraid to ask for what you want and need from collaborators, distributors, agents, and even your audience. Who knows, you might get a "yes." In a recent post I talked about dealing with rejection. You must learn to deal with it, because it's a certainty that you will get rejected sometime. But don't let the fear of rejection stop you. The answer is always 'no' until you ask.

Take Time to Revise

My first job as a programming executive was with Cinemax. My boss, Luke Beermann, trained me on the process. Each schedule took one month to create, because we built time into the schedule for review and revisions. I asked Luke why we couldn't get the schedule completed in two weeks. He told me, "You never get it right the first time. Even when you're sure you wrote it perfectly, you will always find a mistake when you look at it afterwards. That doesn't mean you're not good; it just means you're human. The company depends on our schedule, so we take time to make sure it's as good as possible when it leaves our office." In these days of instant posting on the internet, Facebook, and twitter, these words ring truer than ever. Make sure that you take time during your creative process to revise and edit. It probably won't be perfect the first time. That's why movies shoot for six weeks, but edit for six months. Similar examples abound throughout the arts. Picasso took months to paint The Guernica, and throughout the process changed the way the individual figures looked, and where their eyes focused. If Picasso had to edit his work, why should you expect anything different? Great art -- great content of any kind -- isn't a news story; you don't make it better by being the first to air. Make sure you plan for revision time in your project. The best creators are the best editors. Remember, anything worth writing is worth re-writing.

Everyone Gets Rejected

One of the hardest things to understand and prepare for in the world of creating content is the certainty -- not the probability, but the certainty -- that your work will be rejected at some time or other. That happens not only to people starting out but also to established artists at the top of their game. I've read interviews with some top producers who say they still pitch ten ideas to networks for every idea that gets accepted. That's a great percentage in the world of television -- it's not uncommon for some producers to pitch a lot more ideas before one gets accepted. Rejection is the norm; acceptance of your idea is the outlier. And while many people understand that fact intellectually before they begin creating content, it's a very different situation when the work you spent years developing gets rejected with only a cursory read, or sometimes no read or all. How can you deal with that and continue to sustain your efforts? First, it helps to know you have a lot of company. Read Stephen King's book on writing -- before he became one of America's best selling authors he was barely supporting his family in a small apartment in Bangor, Maine. It's well known that JK Rowling was living on the dole in the UK when she wrote the first Harry Potter book. All the networks rejected Survivor, until Mark Burnett had the chance to re-pitch the idea to the head of CBS. Every record company except one rejected the Beatles music. They didn't give up, and neither should you. Second, it helps to think of your work as something that will find an audience, even if it hasn't yet found one. The rejections aren't the end of the creative process, they're part of the process. Expect rejections, and when you get one acknowledge it and move on. If you get constructive feedback, try to incorporate it in your work. Third, work on multiple projects. If one gets rejected, you still have others to create. That keeps you from putting all your energy in one creative basket. Hal Prince, the Broadway producer, said he always scheduled a meeting on the next show for the day after the reviews came out for his current show. If the reviews were good, they had a new show to develop. And if the reviews were bad, they had a new show to develop. Even if you want to spend most of your time on your new novel, make sure you spend a little time outlining your next story. That's a good thing to have ready in case a network or publisher asks, "What else do you have?" Finally, consider ignoring the gatekeepers and going straight to the audience. The internet has made it relatively easy to self-publish books, post videos, poetry, music, etc. It's possible that a network or publisher will discover you from your internet post. In previous posts I provided examples of viral content that made its creators famous; you probably know some, too. However, understand that if you are self-publishing on the web, you need a plan to market your material, or it will drown in the sea of content already available. You work will be rejected, and it will feel like you were personally rejected. It's your ability to overcome rejection and continue to create that will determine your ultimate success.

Creating Lin-sane content

If you had submitted a script about the Jeremy Lin story before the last two weeks, I guarantee you that every publisher and movie company would tell you it could never happen. For those anthropologists in the future who are reading this to learn about early 21st century culture, I'll recap. Lin, a Harvard graduate, is the first Asian-American to play in the NBA. He languished at the end of the bench of a couple of teams before the New York Knicks picked him up in December, 2011 to sit on the end of their bench. Injuries to Knick guards forced the team to play Lin, and in his first eight starts he scored more points than any point guard in NBA history in their first 8 starts. The Knicks, who despite having two of the highest paid players on their team, won 7 of 8 games where Lin played, and now have a winning record for the season. Jeremy Lin is more than a basketball story -- he's been covered by the major news organizations, magazines, blogs and you tube. Mark Twain once said, "Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction is obligated to stick to possibilities; truth isn't." It's true that the stories we create need to establish a plausible reality for our readers. In addition to that, a successful story will connect with our readers or viewers. That's why the Jeremy Lin story is so popular. Who doesn't feel unjustly neglected at some time? Many times we feel that we're on the end of the bench at work, or in life. We believe that we can become stars like Lin, when we get the chance. Jeremy Lin's story resonates because it taps into this universal yearning for a chance to shine. Lin-sanity is also a positive story. Jeremy Lin is a nice young man, who gives his faith and his teammates credit for his success. Most people prefer a positive story to a negative story. We want to believe that hard work will be rewarded, that good behavior is rewarded, and happy endings are real. Even in a horror story, where the monster kills a lot of characters, our hero eventually kills the monster. If the stories you create end happily, you have a much better chance of their being popular. So to create Lin-sane content, follow these three principles: 1. Tap into your audience's deepest desires 2. Stay positive 3. Stay original -- tell us a story we haven't heard before.

Creativity and the Republican Primary Debates

I usually try to keep my subjects evergreen, but every now and then current events provides such a teachable moment I can’t resist. One of these moments occurred during the recent Republican candidates’ debate in my home state of Florida.

During the debate Speaker Newt Gingrinch said that he wanted to establish a settlement on the moon by the end of his second term as President, or by 2020. The Speaker came in for some immediate ridicule by Governor Mitt Romney, who said that if any of his executives came to him with an idea like that costing millions or billions of dollars that he would be fired immediately.

It certainly sounds like Governor Romney likes to fire people. Mr. Gingrich received a great deal of ridicule about this pledge over the last few days. Perhaps it was the offhand way he made the comment during the debate, or the obvious pandering to the many people living on the Space Coast who are now looking for work after the end of the shuttle program. Politics aside, I believe Governor Romney was too quick to dismiss this big idea.

After all, the United States had a working road system in the 1950s. Why spend all that money to build the interstate highway system? In the early days of the 20th century, when automobiles regularly broke down, people laughed at Henry Ford’s plan to pay his workers enough money to buy one of his mass-produced cars. Who besides Steve Jobs thought people wanted ipods, until Apple started producing them? Last quarter, Apple made more money than almost any company in American history.

Governor Romney apparently doesn’t know there are already several firms in the U.S. and around the world working to make space flight practical and profitable. Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Airlines, for example, is considered a successful entrepreneur. Why is he investing money in Virgin Galactic, if he doesn’t think it will pay off someday? I would rather have a CEO willing to explore big ideas, like Mr. Branson, than one that rejects them out of hand like Governor Romney.

One of the first things you learn when leading a corporate brainstorming session (I’ve led and participated in many over the years) is never to crush a big idea at the start. You consider it, and analyze the pros and cons. Bad managers crush ideas at the beginning, and as a result, miss out on a lot of great potential. So many creative and profitable products come from unexpected sources. For example, post-it notes were created because a glue researchers at 3M discovered failed – objects could easily be peeled off the paper.

To use an entertainment example, Comedy Central discovered South Park in a video Christmas card someone commissioned from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They didn’t ask agents to bring them an idea about a poorly drawn cartoon featuring foul-mouthed fourth graders. The best ideas, the most original ideas, usually occur because someone says, “I know this is crazy, but let’s try it anyway.”

When you’re creating your content, whether it’s a novel, video, movie, or painting (or anything else) say “Yes” to the big idea. After all, you are in control of your own process. See where the big idea leads you. Who knows? Maybe your work of art will someday be exhibited on the walls or a copy will live in the library on Luna City.

Less is More

The third of Sondheim's principals is a phrase that you may have heard before: "Less is More." If you've spent any time in a group critiquing a poem or novel,play or movie, or a song, you've heard someone say, "less is more." That means that a simple, straightforward expression of your idea can be much more effective than a more elaborate, fancy expression.

Creators like to overstate. Actors love to show more emotion than their role calls for, because they think that's the way the audiences can see how good they are. Writers and lyricists love to show off their facility with words. Larry Hart once rhymed "company" with "bump a knee." In general, your audience finds simplicity and honesty more compelling. Doing less allows the true feelings of a scene to emerge. Less does really create more impact.

Of course, you always have to be careful to make sure that less doesn't mean less. If you are letting the form dictate content, and taking care with the details, you'll know when less is more for your piece.

One other lesson learned from Sondheim is to keep refining your work. You'll probably not get it right the first time, the second time, the third time, and maybe not even the fourth time. Keep working until you get your content right. Your audience is giving you their time and sometimes even their money for your art. You owe them your best effort.

Keep these principles in mind, and maybe you will be a vital artist when you hit 80.

Sondheim's First Principle

Form Dictates Content. The format of your piece will influence how you create it. If you're writing a musical, you should include some songs. If your program is about a group of twentysomethings living in New York, they're going to talk differently than a group of twentysomethings working on oil rigs in West Texas. If you're painting a picture in watercolor, it's not going to look the same as if you used oil paints.

Those extreme examples may seem obvious to most of you, but the principle applies to the most subtle details. If you're writing a play and you need to add some dialogue to cover a scene change it's important to remember what the play is about so your dialogue fits the characters and advances the plot. Sondheim says in his book that he can't write songs for any play until the librettist provides him with the characters and dialogue. The songs grow out of the characters' actions and passions, and become an integral part of the show.

What form are you using for your content? Let the form inform the content you create.