There was an intimidating figure in film school at NYU, when I was enrolled. He was our directing instructor. He hailed from Moscow, where he had taught at the film school there, the most revered school at the time in the world. He cut a domineering presence, with his dense mustache and shaved head and thick accent.

Once we were screening rough cuts of short films in the theatre. A student’s film had just finished. The final scene had played out on the screen in the pitch-black room. The film roll clattered through the projector, and then there was only silence in the darkroom. We were all awaiting a response from him. Finally, out of the void, he said a single word, long and drawn out, and the word was “NO.” My classmate was, needless to say, crushed.

But that stern demeanor belied a caring personality. He often stopped me in the hallways at school and said that he had been thinking about a particular scene in my latest film and he had come up with an idea as to how to better cut it together. He really wanted our films to be the best that they could be. He critiqued those films with a disarming passion.

He once made an observation. It stuck in my head as a little gem. He said that a good director is someone who pretends that she knows what she is doing. This wasn’t just a suggestion to indulge in ego-based bravado. Rather, it was an invitation to look closer at the creative process. The process is, at its most elemental, an act of faith. The artist is swimming out into uncharted waters. One can only rely upon an assuredness that answers will come one’s way. The unconscious will begin to answer all those questions that one will inevitably have floating around in one’s head.

Of course, a director’s job is compounded by the extra stress of having an entire crew looking for guidance from the director. This is true of all collaborative arts. The choreographer probably finds herself in the same boat at every rehearsal. An artist in a more solitary creative endeavor, however, still has to encounter the fear of not-knowing. He still has to have an answer for the blank page or empty canvas. So just pretend that you know exactly where you are going. Trust in the universe that you will soon know.