Training = Turning Pro
Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have professional habits.
How does the pro acquire professional habits?
By training.
(The amateur by contrast either trains like an amateur or doesn’t train at all.)
The passage below comes from Rosanne Cash’s wonderful 2011 memoir, Composed.
From that moment I changed the way I approached songwriting, I changed how I sang, I changed my work ethic, and I changed my life. I sought out Marge Rivingston in New York to work on my voice and I started training, as if I were a runner, in both technique and stamina. I started paying attention to everything, both in the studio and out. If I found myself drifting off into daydreams–an old, entrenched habit–I pulled myself awake and back into the present moment. Instead of toying with ideas, I examined them, and I tested the authenticity of my instincts musically. I stretched my attention span consciously. I read books on writing by Natalie Goldberg and Carolyn Heilbrun and began to self-edit and refine more. I went deeper into every process involved with writing and musicianship. I realized I had earlier been working only within my known range–never pushing far outside the comfort zone to take any real risks. I started painting, so I could learn about the absence of words and sound, and why I needed them. I took painting lessons from Sharon Orr, who had a series of classes at a studio called Art and Soul.
There’s a term for the changes Rosanne incorporated into her life.
Training.
Self-training.
And another one: Turning pro.
I remained completely humbled by the dream [that had precipitated these external changes] and it stayed with me through every waking hour of completing [my album] “King’s Record Shop” … I vowed the next record would reflect my new commitment. Rodney [Crowell, Rosanne’s then-husband] was at the top of his game as a record producer, but I had come to feel curiously like a neophyte in the studio after the dream. Everything seemed new, frightening, and tremendously exciting. I had awakened from the morphine sleep of success into the life of an artist.
DO THE WORK
Steve shows you the predictable Resistance points that every writer hits in a work-in-progress and then shows you how to deal with each one of these sticking points. This book shows you how to keep going with your work.
THE AUTHENTIC SWING
A short book about the writing of a first novel: for Steve, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded.
NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T
Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careers—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in 197 pages.
TURNING PRO
Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits. When we turn pro, we give up the comfortable life but we find our power. Steve answers the question, "How do we overcome Resistance?"
Very inspiring, thank you.
Right now, I’ve arrived in Edinburgh for the Festival Fringe. The world’s biggest arts festival. I am bringing my first ever solo comedy show here after years of building up to it. I am turning pro. Wish me Glück. Jürgen x
Jurgen,
May your comedy double them over with laughter and bring tears to their eyes!