If any of you have been reading my guest posts over the past week, you know I tend to write fairly comedic material.
Brian's Book - Prelude To A Super Airplane
We all need to be inspired by individuals who take big steps to accomplish their goals. My guest today is Brian Spaeth. He is the writer and star of Who Shot Mamba?, a Broadband Motion Picture debuting October 13th on Koldcast.tv. You can see the first teaser-trailer on the website, and the second exclusively at the Facebook Page. Brian has also published two novels, and writes regularly at his own blog.
Brian’s inspiration:
I’d actually like to step away from that here and go on a bit about motivation and inspiration and things in that general area. See, I’m a firm believer in two things:
1) Motivation and inspiration is self-generated.
2) There is no such thing as fate – it’s like in Terminator 2: “There is no fate but what you make,” or whatever he said.
Don’t take these things to be negatives, because that doesn’t mean you can’t choose to become inspired by outside forces, or that you don’t have a fate. In fact, that’s just the thing – write your own. That should be inspiring in and of itself – it’s all very circular, and I’m sure some mind scientist has made up a word for it.
Moving on, let’s take an analytical approach to getting motivated. This is the mental checklist (of a sort) that I put myself through when embarking on a new project.
1) Decide what your project is.
2) Determine if you are capable of completing the project, ejecting all outside forces and commitments from the equation. Just you vs the project. Given the time and resources, could you do it?
NOTE: For example, one day I decided I wanted to be a pro football player. A quick analysis said I’m simply not capable.
If your answer to the first question is solid, and the answer to the second is “yes”, then the hard part appears: How badly do you want it?
Every project is going to require sacrifice. Make a list of the things you’ll have to give up – leisure time, TV, sugar, whatever – to complete your quest. (I’ll tell you this – in the three years it took to complete my feature film, I can count on one hand the number of times I went out with my friends.)
I guess my main point here is that in some respects, eject emotion for a moment and embrace an analytical view of your project. Really look at it in a mathematical way, and you’ll get one of two answers.
You either can or can’t do it. If you can, you no longer have excuses. That should be inspiring. How badly do you want it?
