![]() So, I think when this did start to happen, I just jumped on it. I will say that if there is one thing that I do give myself credit for, it’s that I know when there is an opportunity and I will fight hard to live up to the grandness of whatever that opportunity is. I was just drawing as an outlet, and as a form of therapy, and it all sort of unfolded. And way back when I started drawing, I certainly never set out to sell a piece of artwork. "This whole journey has definitely been a process of saying yes to the very next thing," Agena says. Shih introduced Agena to literary agent Monica Odom, and together they teamed up to develop the idea into the book that would become No Mistakes. Agena initially hesitated, but fate stepped in: Amanda Shih, then an editor at Penguin Random House, called in to an episode of the Gilmore Guys podcast that Agena was guesting on, and it changed everything. It was her drawings, in fact, that were the impetus for the book.Īgena had been posting photos of her illustrations to Facebook for a while when fans started to comment that she should turn them into an adult coloring book. So, I asked myself 'What do I need?' and 'What am I scared of?' Well, I’m constantly scared that I’m not good enough, or I’m not the right type of something, and that I’m a failure."Īgena's book is a collection of curated activities - think, writing a list of "bad ideas," drawing a Venn Diagram of love and fear, and creating an "affirmation builder" - that slot into 10 different chapters all dedicated to learning different creative lessons including "Let Inspiration Lie Lightly Upon You," "Failure Is Fodder For Courage" and "Cherish Your Voice." The inspiration behind No Mistakes came from both Agena's work in improv - where the founding principle of "yes, and" fosters the idea of creative openness - and the way that she approaches drawing. But at this age that I’m coming into, it was a question of ‘Well, if I don’t start to feel comfortable speaking for myself and trusting my voice, then when?' If I want to do it, I’d better start now!" "I love books like this, that dive back into what we need to do as artists. My comfort zone is to defer to other people that know better. Even though I’m older now, I always defer. "It had come to a point in my career where, even though I had been acting for a while, I was - and still am to some extent - fearful of speaking out. So, I asked myself 'What do I need?' and 'What am I scared of?' Well, I’m constantly scared that I’m not good enough, or I’m not the right type of something, and that I’m a failure," Agena tells Bustle. "I love books like this, that dive into what we need to do as artists. But in her new book, No Mistakes: A Perfect Workbook for Imperfect Artists, she tries to reclaim the creative process once and for all. Actress Keiko Agena, best known for her role as Lane Kim on the beloved television series Gilmore Girls, has been there, too. There are countless ways you can make mistakes as an artist, and those mistakes can often have a massive effect on you mentally and emotionally. Or that drawing you've spent hours sketching ends up with all the wrong proportions. Maybe the chapter you spent two weeks writing turns out to be an unusable mess. If you're an artist, you know all about the downsides to creating. ![]()
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