Every story holds the germ of another story. The value of the spin-off , drilled into me back in journalism school, became my mantra because at the time producing reporting assignments felt like the same all-encompassing ordeal as delivering a baby. Except I had to deliver every week.
It took me years of newsmares (that’s when you wake up in the middle of the night in a pool of your own sweat because you dreamed tomorrow’s newspaper hit the street with great blank holes where your stories should have run) to trust that every story is a building block towards a larger understanding. Reporting is not an easy gig but it all became a little more manageable once I got past a lot of rookie mistakes and developed a growing group of trusted and informed contacts. One issue raises another, so the fear of coming up with nothing to write about diminished over time and before I realized it I had developed a fairly comprehensive understanding of all the issues in my area of reporting. This is why it’s such a crying shame to see seasoned beat reporters disappear from the fold (so to speak) in the freelance race to the bottom. But I digress.
These days I’ve been seeing some parallels with becoming a competent, informed reporter and building an art practice. I’m just about over the real-world shock of trying to make from what I’ve learned in art school, which produces about the same level of anxiety I felt after graduating from journalism school way back when. Extending that parallel, I’m square in the equivalent of the junior-woodchuck reporter stage, making a lot of rookie mistakes, fumbling my way toward a new sort of understanding. (Last week’s rookie mistake: layering a photograph with pouring medium, only to watch all the vivid colours run and pool into a swamp palette. Two weeks ago it was the discovery that a nearly-full can of yellow spraypaint was just high enough in my toolbox that the closed lid depressed its trigger, covering the entire contents in a gummy yellow mess.)
It took me years of newsmares (that’s when you wake up in the middle of the night in a pool of your own sweat because you dreamed tomorrow’s newspaper hit the street with great blank holes where your stories should have run) to trust that every story is a building block towards a larger understanding. Reporting is not an easy gig but it all became a little more manageable once I got past a lot of rookie mistakes and developed a growing group of trusted and informed contacts. One issue raises another, so the fear of coming up with nothing to write about diminished over time and before I realized it I had developed a fairly comprehensive understanding of all the issues in my area of reporting. This is why it’s such a crying shame to see seasoned beat reporters disappear from the fold (so to speak) in the freelance race to the bottom. But I digress.
These days I’ve been seeing some parallels with becoming a competent, informed reporter and building an art practice. I’m just about over the real-world shock of trying to make from what I’ve learned in art school, which produces about the same level of anxiety I felt after graduating from journalism school way back when. Extending that parallel, I’m square in the equivalent of the junior-woodchuck reporter stage, making a lot of rookie mistakes, fumbling my way toward a new sort of understanding. (Last week’s rookie mistake: layering a photograph with pouring medium, only to watch all the vivid colours run and pool into a swamp palette. Two weeks ago it was the discovery that a nearly-full can of yellow spraypaint was just high enough in my toolbox that the closed lid depressed its trigger, covering the entire contents in a gummy yellow mess.)
But it’s not just the ‘happy accidents’ that lead to spin-offs but the off-shoot ideas that come during one project that leads to the next. I’m starting to see that one thing leads to another and at some point the rookie will become the veteran, fluent in the language, until I will be able to look back and see that there was some method in all this madness.
Exhibit A: A screen-shot of the latest iPhoto import shows detailed photos taken of my recently completed Parkade Quilt.
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