David Bayles & Ted Orland:

Put simply, your work is your guide: a complete, comprehensive, limitless reference book on your work.  There is no other such book, and it is yours alone.  It functions this way for no one else.

Art & Fear, p. 35-36

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

In the end the work got done the way such things always get done -- by carving out solo time for the project and nibbling away at it one sentence at a time, one idea at a time.

Art & Fear, p. 121

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

There is a moment for each artist in which a particular truth can be found, and if it is not found then, it will not ever be.

Art & Fear, p. 106

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

It's easier to paint in the angel's feet to another's masterwork than to discover where the angels live within yourself.

Art & Fear, p. 96-97

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

In the ideal -- that is to say, real -- artist, fears not only continue to exist, they exist side by side with the desires that complement them, perhaps drive them, certainly feed them.

Art & Fear, p. 50

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

...the important point here is not that you have -- or don't have -- what other artists have, but rather that it doesn't matter. Whatever they have is something needed to do their work -- it wouldn't help you in your work even if you had it. Their magic is theirs. You don't lack it. You don't need it. It has nothing to do with you. Period.

Art & Fear, p.35

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

Many people first respond deeply to art -- indeed, respond deeply to the world -- upon finding works of art that seem to speak directly to them.

Art & Fear, p. 102

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

Our understanding of the past is altered by our experiences in the present.

Art & Fear, p. 107

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

The world we see today is the legacy of people noticing the world and commenting on it in forms that have been preserved.

Art & Fear, p. 106

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

The individual recipe any artist finds for proceeding belongs to that artist alone -- it's non-transferable and of little use to others. It won't help you to know exactly what Van Gogh needed to gain or lose in order to get on with his work. What is worth recognizing is that Van Gogh needed to gain or lose at all, that his work was no more or less inevitable than yours, and that he -- like you -- had only himself to fall back on.

Art & Fear, p. 117

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

What veteran artists know about each other is that they have engaged the issues that matter to them. What veteran artists share in common is that they have learned how to get on with their work.

Art & Fear, p. 117

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

Art work is ordinary work, but it takes courage to embrace that work, and wisdom to mediate the interplay of art & fear.

Art & Fear, p. 117

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

To make art is to sing with the human voice. To do this you must first learn that the only voice you need is the voice you already have.

Art & Fear, p. 117

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

We tell the stories we have to tell, stories of the things that draw us in -- and why should any of us have more than a handful of those? The only work really worth doing -- the only work you can do convincingly -- is the work that focuses on the things you care about.

Art & Fear, p. 116

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

Over the long run, the people with the interesting answers are those who ask the interesting questions.

Art & Fear, p. 113

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

Answers are reassuring, but when you're onto something really useful, it will probably take the form of a question.

Art & Fear, p. 113

Bookin' It in 2010

I read the following 18 books in 2010. The titles in bold were particularly influential, inspiring or interesting.

1. Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity - Hugh MacLeod

2. Time to Write: More Than 100 Professional Writers Reveal How to Fit Writing into Your Busy Life - Kelly L. Stone

3. Lunch Poems - Frank O'Hara

4. Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back - Frank Schaeffer

5. Sinners Welcome - Mary Karr

6. Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking - David Bayles & Ted Orland

7. Temper - Beth Bachmann

8. Churched: One Kid's Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess - Matthew Paul Turner

9. Drops Like Stars - Rob Bell

10. The Misunderstood God: The Lies Religion Tells About God - Darin Hufford

11. Newspaper Blackout - Austin Kleon

12. Hear No Evil: My Story of Innocence, Music, and the Holy Ghost - Matthew Paul Turner

13. The Liars' Club - Mary Karr

14. Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer - Chely Wright

15. Bicycles: Love Poems - Nikki Giovanni

16. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible - A. J. Jacobs

17. Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in The Peoples Temple - Deborah Layton

18. Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions - Rachel Held Evans

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

Making art depends upon noticing things -- things about yourself, your methods, your subject matter.

Art & Fear, p. 109

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

Some people who make art are driven by inspiration, others by provocation, still others by desperation. Artmaking grants access to worlds that may be dangerous, sacred, forbidden, seductive, or all of the above. It grants access to worlds you may otherwise never fully engage.

Art & Fear, p. 108

David Bayles & Ted Orland:

In making art you declare what is important.

Art & Fear, p. 108