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Professional practice

Artists & performers

Risk, audience, repetition, rejection, livelihood, influence, finishing, and how making changes the maker.

12 questions, 234 answers on the record, from 218 members. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.

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Worth reading

Do you rely more on inspiration or discipline to make your work?

Denton Cooley

Cardiothoracic surgeon; founder of the Texas Heart Institute

I think so. I really do. With your own effort, you can improve yourself, but people find they can’t improve beyond a certain point.

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1991

Carlos Slim Helú

Businessman and investor; chairman of Grupo Carso and América Móvil

It takes a combination of ways to do these things, more than discipline. It’s a way of life. It’s like diet or gymnastics. You can know all the gymnastic things, all the exercises.

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 2007

Athol Fugard

Playwright, director and actor

Do I have a muse? Well, I don’t know if this is an adequate answer, but I suppose my muse is the people of South Africa.

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 2014

Read all 27 →

Every question in this questionnaire

  1. What must be repeated until it becomes free rather than mechanical? —
  2. Do you rely more on inspiration or discipline to make your work? 27
  3. Which creative risk taught you the most, whether or not the work succeeded? —
  4. When should an artist listen to an audience, and when should the audience be ignored? —
  5. How do you tell when a piece of work is done? 67
  6. What are you best at that nobody watching would notice? 26
  7. Which rejection changed your work or your direction? —
  8. What do you do when you feel creatively stuck? 63
  9. How do money and the need to earn a living shape the work you make? —
  10. Which writers or artists have most influenced your work? 42
  11. Whose work makes you envious? 9
  12. How has making the work changed the person who makes it? —

Who has answered

Members with enough answers in this questionnaire to be worth arriving at — listed A–Z, not ranked by count.

  • AF
    Athol Fugard

    Playwright, director and actor

    2 answers South Africa 1932–2025

  • CL
    Catherine Lacey

    English actress

    2 answers United Kingdom / United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 1904–1979

  • Charles H. Townes

    Physicist; Nobel laureate in physics for the invention of the maser and laser

    2 answers United States 1915–2015

  • FG
    Frank O. Gehry

    Architect; winner of the 1989 Pritzker Prize

    2 answers Canada 1929–2025

  • Gore Vidal

    Novelist, essayist and playwright

    2 answers United States 1925–2012

  • Kazuo Ishiguro

    Novelist and screenwriter; Nobel laureate in Literature, 2017

    2 answers United Kingdom b. 1954

  • MH
    Marya Hornbacher

    American journalist and author

    2 answers United States b. 1974

  • NK
    Nina Katchadourian

    American interdisciplinary artist and educator

    2 answers United States b. 1968

  • Orhan Pamuk

    Novelist; Nobel laureate in Literature, 2006

    2 answers Turkey b. 1952

  • RF
    Richard Feynman

    Theoretical physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 1965

    2 answers United States 1918–1988

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