The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.

Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves.

When we seek daily spiritual guidance, we are guided toward the next step forward for our art. Sometimes the step is very small. Sometimes the step is, "Wait. Not now." Sometimes the step is, "Work on something else for a while." When we are open to Divine Guidance, we will receive it. It will come to us as the hunch, the inkling, the itch. It will come to us as timely conversations with others. It will come to us in many ways--but it will come.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

We have this idea that we need to be in the mood to write. We don't.

At it's essence, art is an alchemical process. Alchemy is a process of transformation.

What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do.