Hello and welcome back to my Creative Advocacy Blog. I'll start this by telling a story from my childhood. When I was young, adults asked me the same question they asked every child. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Most didn't care about the carefully constructed answer I prepared. They just wanted to pat my head and smile at my lovely, innocent remarks. One day, my father's mother asked me what I wanted to be, and I gave her the same answer I'd given everyone. "I want to be a writer and an artist when I grow up." The thing was she didn't pat my head, and she didn't smile. My grandmother looked down at me and scowled. "You're just gonna starve," she said. "Better think of somethin
Hello once again to the creative advocacy blog. Today I would like to discuss the use of positive reinforcement as opposed to negative critique. As I have stated before, I'm a writer and an artist. I graduated from the Ringling College of Art and Design, and I've worked in a number of art related fields throughout my career. From the beginning, it was nailed into my head that to do this thing called art, I had to get used to critique. Putting your work up on the wall and having people tear it apart was part of the process. It helped you learn, and it got you ready for the real world. I can say with all honesty, it did the latter but not necessarily the former. Here's what it took me decades
