One of those "don't use my name" folks wrote to ask me…
I know you often speak to aspiring writers and voice actors. What are the three most important pieces of advice you give to them than applies to all of them?
Hmm. If you ask me this next week, I might give you a slightly different answer but the three things that occur to me at the moment are as follows — and these are not necessarily in order of importance…
One: Have an attainable goal. I don't buy into this "You can achieve whatever dream you have if you try hard enough" stuff. I think that's a false, dangerous approach to take. If you decide "I want to pitch for the Dodgers and I will be satisfied with nothing else," you're setting yourself up for probable failure. Even if you're good enough to pitch for the Dodgers — and you just might not be — there's a very small number of people who can ever attain that dream. I always tell students that they need to find that sweet spot between idealism and pragmatism.
Two: Be there and be there on time. You can't win if you don't show up and participate. That will (not "may" — will) involve occasional failures before you get to the occasional successes. Every accomplished gymnast has landed on their ass hundreds, if not thousands of times…and they show up. I know several people who I think have destroyed not just careers but important aspects of their lives by always being late for things. Many of them think that's not a problem if they have a good excuse but being late puts everyone around you in a dysfunctional situation even when you have a good excuse. So be there and be there on time.
Three: It's not enough to think you know what you want. You have to understand why you want it…and sometimes, that leads to you realizing you don't want what you thought you wanted. Perhaps you want just one aspect of it. I know a guy who thought he wanted to be an actor…but through a series of events, he came to realize that he really didn't want to do all the hard work that's necessary to succeed as an actor. What he really wanted was to be famous. Once he'd discovered that, he realized (a) that there were better ways to achieve that, and (b) that there were downsides to being famous. And realizing all that caused him to decide that (c) he really didn't want to be actor or famous. Today, he's really happy that he didn't pursue either of those goals. But he wasted many years of his life before he got on track.
That's three. I think they're good advice and they apply to everyone — especially the one about being on time. People who are late for everything usually don't realize what they're doing to their lives…and the lives of those around them.
