Over the last year I took poetry and fiction classes, where I was taught by Dr. Clark. He has been one of the greatest professors I’ve ever had, introducing me to different approaches to writing, pushing me beyond what I ever felt myself capable of, listening to my struggles and concerns with writing while offering effective tools to grow, and ultimately giving me confidence in myself as a young writer and person overall. I carry such immense gratitude that I know him. This blog most likely wouldn’t even exist if it was not for him.
In every class session I scribbled down as much as I could of what he said, and now I’ve compiled a list of wise words from Dr. Clark that I found in those notes. While most pertain to art and writing, there is something of significance to anyone who seeks wisdom. Thank you so much, Dr. Clark, for everything you’ve taught me.
Emotions are like weather, they pass through and we don’t need to cling to them.
“You need to be dead inside, just a little bit.”
If we don’t lament we can’t actually be happy.
No rejection can invalidate your artistic pursuit; only you can.
“To be a writer is to fixate on things on a weird level.”
Failure is where art happens.
Your job will use you until you fall apart and get replaced, so it’s on you to make sure you’re okay.
Don’t let your job define what is healthy and balanced for you.
Don’t commit to the job more than you commit to yourself.
In terms of relationship advice, ask questions that the other person wants to respond to rather than what you want to hear.
No one cares if you build a sandcastle and it falls apart.
“When you’re writing your story, write the damn story.”
“If you don’t have discipline, you don’t have art.”
Faith is displacement from the limits of this world.
Comfort shuts down possibility.
“Learning to be a human is often fraught with mistake making.”
“Your life is a work of art.”
“We can’t make others what we want them to be.”
In life we’ll all do things we wish we hadn’t done or that we could’ve done differently. Take the lesson and leave the guilt behind.
These words, among many other insights from Dr. Clark, have stood out to me for a number of reasons; while they’ve turned around negative thought processes in my mind (such as fixating on failure and rejection as scars in my life) and transformed them into something new, I think the reason I find so much solace in these words is that Dr. Clark’s wisdom reflects the idea that we’re all writing our own story.
Every good book or movie presents a flawed character who endures a journey that ends up allowing them to choose to change in some way, and what I’ve learned from Dr. Clark is that we are beings of change. We can fail miserably, take risks that result in a terrible outcome, become disappointed in others and ourselves, and still learn from those lessons and take them as guidance throughout the rest of our journeys. While life is coupled with those mishaps and hardships, there is also a multitude of goodness and beauty surrounding those things.
Art, to me, can often be the appreciation of what is good, along with the acknowledgment of what we must lament; both the good and bad are important to recognize, as they enhance our own character development. We have the ability to look back at our actions and mindsets and revise them in the same way that all writers revise multiple drafts.
I ultimately believe that collecting wisdom from others and learning from each positive and negative experience in our lives is how we continue developing our own stories into ones of growth, joy, perseverance, courage, and whichever qualities God has written to lead us through our stories.
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