Keep the drama in the drama. If it’s all used up in your life, there’s nothing left for the page. #bestlessonlearned

You guys tweeted some really great lessons in our Back To School Contest. We chose the one above from @jamierosehere because it’s a wonderful reminder, especially for us writers, actors, artists. Expanding on this idea, David Lynch talks about the importance of keeping a healthy mind in his book on creativity, Catching the Big Fish:

Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they are like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They are like a vise grip on creativity. If you’re in that grip, you can hardly get out of bed, much less experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You must have clarity to create. You have to be able to catch ideas.

Jamie will be winning a free month of access to theOffice to work on her upcoming book. Thanks to everyone who tweeted. We’ll be doing more of these contests in the future so stay tuned!

Runner-up lesson is from @JasonNieves:

Don’t look at your friends successes as your failures.