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Storytelling Advice from Ira Glass

Posted: July 3rd, 2007, 4:19 pm
by Roy Janik
Some encouraging (and kind of discouraging, too) words from Ira Glass... you know, the guy from This American Life whose voice Kareem hates:
Ira Glass wrote:"... For the first couple of years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good... ... it has an ambition to be good but it's not quite that good.

But your taste... ... is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. You can tell that it's still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase... ... they quit.

The thing I would just like to say to you with all my heart is that... everybody I know, who does interesting creative work, they went though a phase of years where... ... they knew that it fell short... ... it didn't have that special thing that we wanted it to have. ...Everybody goes through that.

... You gotta know that it's totally normal.... ... the most important, possible thing, that you could do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.

Put yourself on a deadline, so that every week or every month, you know that you have to finish one story... whatever it's going to be... ...even if it's not somebody who pays you, but you're in a situation where you have to have to turn out the work.

It's only by going through a huge volume of work that you're actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work that you're making will be as good as your ambitions.
This is from a video of storytelling advice from Ira glass, found here:
http://www.yourdailyawesome.com/2007/03 ... orytelling

Posted: July 3rd, 2007, 5:26 pm
by LisaJackson
Thank you so much for sharing this, Roy!

Posted: July 4th, 2007, 12:02 am
by sara farr
yay!

Posted: July 6th, 2007, 2:14 am
by DollarBill
Sounds exactly like the Tenacious D song "Cosmic Shame".

Posted: July 6th, 2007, 9:56 am
by vine311
DollarBill wrote:Sounds exactly like the Tenacious D song "Cosmic Shame".
Ha! That's exactly what I thought.

Posted: July 6th, 2007, 11:42 am
by LuBu McJohnson
or we will say "stop."

...and then seriously, you must stop.

Posted: July 6th, 2007, 3:23 pm
by kbadr
This dude parodies his voice and cadence wonderfully.

http://www.kasperhauser.com/this_am_life.html

Links to SkyMaul, so I guess he's an improviser.


Seriously, I will punch Ira Glass in the throat if I ever meet him.

Posted: July 6th, 2007, 7:26 pm
by acrouch
kbadr wrote:This dude parodies his voice and cadence wonderfully.
Awesome.