Creator vs Artist, Beta Readers and Other Musings…

I had the main idea for this blog several weeks ago. Since then we’ve had the worst freeze my tropical home has seen in over 30 years. This was coupled with widespread power outages as Texas tried desperately to keep it’s entire power grid from collapsing. This meant I went days without consistent power or internet and one two day stretch saw us only have power for 5 hours (not consecutively). So basically my lesson learned is that Texas, for all of it’s posturing, may be a third world country. Anyway, coming out the other side of that my dog Jack, who many of you have seen in pictures and videos on FB, got really sick. They think he may have had a stroke but regardless he has central vestibular disease, which means he basically has vertigo. With medication he has started getting better but it’s still been tedious.

During all this downtime it’s given me time to think on a concept that has been brewing in my head for a while. The thing that has been bothering me is the weird cousin of the hustle mindset, the content creator. It’s become a popular label, on Facebook, Instagram, Patreon, Youtube, the list goes on and on. Basically the gist of it is that you are a Creator, you should take control and put out content constantly, allowing you to command a legion of fans and be successful. And admittedly it works for a lot of people. I myself follow several people on Youtube who have built their channels up with a ton of followers and get tens of thousands of views every week. But my question is, why pressure artist to adopt this mindset? Why push them to basically be an assembly line, churning out endless art for never ending, self imposed deadlines? Personally I didn’t go to work for myself so that I could create my own assembly line, endlessly churning out content until I get so burned out I can’t see straight. Don’t get me wrong, I love creating stuff. I love writing music, I love writing stories, I’ve even been dabbling with some stop motion shorts in my spare time.

My point is that you shouldn’t feel pressure to meet deadlines and churn out content. Art is art and that is the most important thing. My wife told me a long time ago that I should just create for the sake of creating and I’ve never understood that until recently. I think the reason for this is because while I’ve been writing music for decades, it’s always been on a certain cycle. When I ran a club, you booked shows for the next month and promoted shows for the next month, and rinsed and repeated that cycle forever. When I was in a band we wrote songs, recorded songs, put out cds, played shows to support those cds, rinse and repeat. Even when I ran Still Not Dead, it was gather stories for the weekly updates and book the monthly shows.

I carried that mentality with me when I started this blog to support my writing and to an extent, my continued musical doodling. I created the blog, signed up for Medium with the hopes of writing non fiction articles, started up a Patreon account, as well as several other accounts. What I’ve found is that if you spread your energy out trying to cover all these various channels on top of your social media, you end up exhausted and don’t work on the important things, like you know, actually writing. I mean let’s be honest, writing is not a spectators sport. I doubt ESPN will ever host the writing championships where contestants vie for the chance to have a write off with Stephen King. So I’ve stopped trying to write on Medium and I’ve let Patreon go for a while. It’s not that I won’t be posting things, on the contrary I plan on releasing a series of ukulele and guitar performances sooner rather than later. I will also continue to keep you posted on the upcoming novel and the new novel that I’m starting on. It’s just that I intend for my main focus to be the art and creating the best stories and music that I possibly can instead of rushing around to meet deadlines. To be honest I feel like the “Content Creator” label, that works well for some, can be a detriment to others. We aren’t all square pegs and fit into the same type holes. Do what works for you and the rest will fall into place.

Anyway…

I’ve finally gotten feedback from Beta Readers about my new novel, “Tears of the Dragon”. It’s been pretty good feedback and some have provided me with excellent feedback and even spotted a few typos that I missed. I plan on editing the novel based on that feedback this week and may finally start the final march forward to release it. What is fascinating to me is that two different readers can read the same chapter and have wildly different opinions on the feel of the book. I guess like music, it’s highly subjective. In any case, I really appreciate all the beta readers and can’t wait to unleash this story on the world.

Anyway, back to work. I’ll try to update more often. The time of year we’re coming out of is usually a really hard time for me and I’m glad to be past it. We’ll talk soon, everyone stay safe!