Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

The Repetition

The Repetition

As soon as you understand that the way to improve in anything is by the repetition of it, you are halfway there.

Why?

Because everyone else wants a shortcut.

Everyone wants the easy button.

And the majority of people will spend way too much time searching for this.

Meanwhile, you are quietly getting in more and more practice.

Eventually many will give up on whatever they are doing because it’s not easy (nothing is).

And the ones that finally do realize all the work that lies ahead – well – you will already be miles ahead of them.

I like the idea that “a professional writer is a novice writer that didn’t quit.”

Understand: Repetition is also persuasive.

At the Bird Cage, I formed the soft, primordial core of what became my comedy act. Over the three years I worked there, I strung together everything I knew, including Dave Steward’s glove into dove trick, some comedy juggling, a few standard magic routines, a banjo song, and some very old jokes. My act was eclectic, and it took ten more years for me to make sense of it. However, the opportunity to perform four and five times a day gave me confidence and poise. Even though my material had few distinguishing features, the repetition made me lose my amateur rattle.

-Steve Martin, Born Standing Up (Amazon)

Practice Comedy Like This

Practice Comedy Like This

Any comedy practice should be done in a setting like this, right?

No real audience. No big judgment. No consequences.

Just a forum in which to find your feet…

I mean, I love getting all this writing practice in on a blog that nobody reads. 🤣

The first published piece I ever wrote was in front of tens of thousands – and that was honestly a little terrifying.

It’s much harder to learn your craft in front of a large audience if you ask me.

Understand: Everyone starts badly.

The theater was run by Woody Wilson, a dead ringer for W. C. Fields, and a boozer, too, and the likable George Stuart, who, on Saturday night, would entertain the crowd with a monologue that had them roaring: “You’re from Tucson? I spent a week there one night!” Four paying customers, in a house that seated two hundred, was officially an audience, so we often did shows to resonating silence. Woody Wilson, on one of these dead afternoons, peed so loudly in the echoing bathroom that it broke up us actors and got laughs from our conservative family audience.

-Steve Martin, Born Standing Up (Amazon)

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