Credo

[breathedout]

Nothing exactly new here, but I'm doing my therapy homework for Thursday (which: cue Sarah Paulson voice: "It's hard. It's hard—it's not for the faint of heart. Being a person"), and pausing to note in passing that I don't think I've articulated this quite so succinctly before:

I need a relationship with my creativity that, to whatever extent possible, disengages from metrics of competition and of debt, and operates instead on terms of (self)-nurturance, generosity, curiosity, and passionate intellectual engagement. This means that any creative work I do outside my day job will be conducted on a non-transactional basis: any collaborations with other people will on my part be done freely, out of desire, and nothing will be owed in return. It also means that the creative practices of other people are not a yardstick by which I am measuring my satisfaction with my own practice. I am engaging with my practice on its own terms.

Comments

[tielan]

I just wandered past your post via my network, but this is an excellent articulation.

[breathedout]

Thank you! <3

[digsdigsdigs]

This is really lovely, and also a useful prod for me, because I have been, uh, totally avoiding thinking about how I want to thread this needle in the next few bits of post-grad work. Thanks for sharing.

[breathedout]

Ha, relatable. Also, glad to be helpful!

[donut_donut]

This seems like an excellent statement of artistic intention.

[breathedout]

Thank you! I figured I should capture it somewhere other than my therapy journal.

[teaforlupin]

I really love this!

[breathedout]

Thanks! I thought it was a nice encapsulation.

[clarasteam]

*points at icon*

this is exactly what I needed to read on the subject - thank you!

[breathedout]

Aw, I'm so glad! Thank you!

[threeofwands]

holy shit, yes. this.

[breathedout]

Aw, yay, glad it resonates. <3

[magnetic_pole]

Helpful in so many other contexts, too. M.

[fennishjournal]

This is so well put and so IMPORTANT. Thank you so much for sharing.

[breathedout]

Thank you! I was glad to have a concise statement of it.

[pennypaperbrain]

I am an evil voice of the marketplace but my great question is still: a fine articulation of artistic intention, but what of artistic ends? At the end of the day is a Great Work of HBBO still a Great Work of HBBO if only Greywash reads it? (Substitute the names there with ‘Hippo’ and ‘Ponder’ and you get something that is often wailed in our household.) A work that is produced entirely on an economically non-combatant basis has no leverage to command an audience. It may receive one – in the case of fic it probably will – but it also may not. Is the process itself enough to be sustaining in that case? I want the answer to be yes, and wonder if you find it is.

[breathedout]

I think the question, for me, isn't as one-sided as "is an audience of one person enough." One also has to ask "Is what's involved in getting a larger audience worth the payoff?" And for me, at least thus far, the answer to that is a resounding "no."

If I could wave a magic wand and be awarded my ideal scenario, I would have both complete artistic freedom and a mid-sized audience composed of queer lovers of experimental prose, meditations on death, and and liminal relationships among women. I would also be spared the time-suck and hassle of the process of querying, agent-wrangling, self-promotion, and all the other paraphernalia of publication. In a very simplified schema, if my two feasible options are:

1. Maintain complete artistic and time-based freedom, with an audience in the single digits, or
2. Sacrifice artistic and time-based freedom, with an audience in the quintuple digits

I would prefer to go with #1. Not because it's my absolute ideal scenario, but because I know from experience that #2 totally obviates my reason for wanting to create in the first place, and I end up getting 0% of what I value. Whereas with #1 I still get, say, 75% of what I want. There might be ways to get the remaining 25%, but it would only be worth doing if it allowed me to keep the 75% that I already have. I'm not categorically saying that traditional publishing, under all possible scenarios, would necessarily wipe out the 75%, but I think it's only something I would do very carefully & with a lot of thought.

[pennypaperbrain]

This sounds very logical and I'm going to add it to my arsenal of intelligent input, thank you.

You might well make it to double digits if you decide to share with your DW readership.