F*ck Inspiration – Just Do it!

Many acting teachers, particularly the ‘Method hacks’ believe that they can teach you to be ‘inspired’ and that only those with ‘inspiration’ create ‘art’, those that can achieve some mythical creative state.

It doesn’t exist.

Let me tell you the secret of success in any field.  

Hard. Work.  That’s right, graft, just graft, just damn hard work.

And the funny thing for me is that most of you don’t believe me. You think it’s only the special ones that get to become professional actors, only the lucky achieve their dreams.

BULLSHIT.

It takes graft, it takes heart and it take action – it takes STRUGGLE.

Either commit to that struggle, or give up and go home.

Sitting around trying to create ‘inspiration’ is like trying to plug a leak by wishing. Inspiration is the result of getting your ducks in a row, and that happens by hard graft.

Work hard and you will get what you want, but trying to become ‘inspired’, to ‘get yourself in the creative mood’, and all the other bullsh*t they try to teach you in the over-marketed weekend acting courses WILL NOT HELP YOU.

Here’s my advice. Don’t wait for INSPIRATION… Do it NOW.

Do it when you can’t be bothered

Do it when it’s too cold and dark

Do it when it’s hard and it makes your head hurt

Do it when you feel ill

Do it when you feel like giving up

Do it when you only have a little time left

Do it when you’re young

Do it when you’re old

Do it with or without the ‘right’ training

Do it when doing it hurts

Do it when doing it makes you feel stupid (you’re not stupid btw!)

Do it when no one else will support you

Do it when you feel like a talentless freak (you’re not talentless either!)

Do it when you want to cry

Do it when you feel like the world is against you

Do it when it’s all going wrong

Do it when it’s difficult and you don’t understand

Like Nike, just do it.  Because on the other side of doing it, is winning.  On the other side of NOT doing it, is regret.

Do it. Or Give in and go home. Because the ones that ARE successful. They did it.  And if you’re already at home, crying into your coffee about how you could have been an actor – DO IT NOW. It’s never too late, if you have strength left to whine, you have strength to achieve your dreams.  Or leave them alone and go and get a job in Starbucks, they’ve got a good career pathway and great benefits.

There, I just saved you six hundred bucks at some Method hack’s bullshit weekend acting course.  If your acting teacher tries to teach you ‘inspiration’, it’s because they don’t have anything useful to teach you.  They dress it up in mysticism and hope you’ll buy it.

If inspiration exists, it exists in all the beads of sweat you put into the graft of doing it, of taking action. Do it. Go on.  I believe you can. Now you need to believe it too…

To You, the Best

Mark Westbrook

Mark Westbrook is the Senior Acting Coach at Acting Coach Scotland and the author of Truth in Action, a top-selling eBook on acting.