“That often happens when you make films. If you try to make the film to accommodate something outside yourself, or please an audience or please the critical community  or for commercial reasons or even artistic goals - if you’re doing it for some calculated reason that you’re not comfortable with and you strike out with it, you feel really bad.”

- Woody Allen

This is a quote that I knew of, and failed to listen to on a few occasions. And he’s right. The only thing that matters is passion. You can’t control the response to your film, you can’t control what happens when it goes out there to the world. The only thing you can control is the passion for your project. And in the end, that’s all that matters.

One of my favorite quotes regarding both creativity and film making is from writer/director/everything Robert Rodriguez.  He always shoots multiple projects at the same time, and appears to be in constant motion, from a creative and filming perspective. When asked about this trait of his, he responded by saying:

“I always pack one or two projects in at a time. If one is not successful, I won’t question my instincts if I’m already on to the next thing. A career is like a train. You have to keep laying that track in front of it. I read about this art class once. If half the class made 50 clay pots, they’d get an A. The other half had to make one perfect pot. As the one half cranked through their 50, they made 10 perfect pots because they figured out how to do it. The people concentrating on the one pot turned it to mud because they overworked it.”

I tend to agree. Perfection in creativity is stifling, and can kill momentum. In turn, perfection kills making mistakes. And mistakes in any field, especially the creative ones, are the only way we learn and become better.

I’m not procrastinating, I’m simply looking for inspiration. How many times have we writers told ourselves that? We say we need to “get in the groove.” And most of the times we’re kidding ourselves. Most of the time we just need to sit and write, even if we are not inspired. True, the right circumstance, the right location. That all helps for inspiration. For calming the brain to write and work.

While we can’t always be like Hemingway and write in a Parisian cafe, looking at to the rain soaked streets of the Latin Quarter, it is important to find the space that we find inspiration from. And if you can’t do that, then do something different. How many times have simply moving to a different spot helped your writing?

“I’ve found over the years that any momentary change stimulates a fresh burst of mental energy. So if I’m in this room and then I go into the other room, it helps me. If I go outside to the street, it’s a huge help. If I go up to take a shower it’s a big help. So I sometimes take extras showers. I’ll go down here (in the living room) and at an impasse and what will help me is to go upstairs and take a shower. It breaks up everything and relaxes me.” - Woody Allen

What tricks or strategies or superstitions do you do to help with your creative endeavors?

This is a great quote from writer/director/actor Adam Rifkin. He’s had an eclectic and accomplished career and expertly weaves from the studio world to the independent world.

“Nobody I know who loves what they do would ever consider kicking back. To me making movies is like sex, the more I do it, the more I want to do it. I absolutely love making movies! It’s been my dream ever since I was 3 or 4 years old, why would I ever want to stop? John Houston made movies into his 80s, Woody Allen steadily cranks out a movie a year and has been doing so since the 60s! The guy is 74! And Clint Eastwood is banging out 2 movies a year and he’s almost 80! I wanna be like those guys. I wanna be making movies until they have to pry the bullhorn out of my cold dead hand.”

Great quote. I couldn’t agree more.

This is from an interview about his film “Look” from the Movie ‘Tudes webside on DVD planet.com.