on the verge of something wonderful...
This was gonna be a comment in response to a post totchipanda made, but it started to get more introspective than comment-y (and also super long), so I figured I'd post it all here instead.
I love reading about other people's creative processes. I find it interesting to compare the similarities and differences between the way they work and the way I do...
Anyway, I just read this awesome book called Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod, who is a cartoon artist. (You can find him right here.) He talks about the differences between being creative and making a living off of creativity, and what I found really interesting was that he stresses maintaining autonomy over your creativity and not selling it out just so that you can sell it. That what creative people get from sharing their work -- in whatever form it happens to take -- is something deeper than a paycheque.
I think that what gets drilled into us as members of a mostly free-market society is that money can be used as an accurate measure of success. That if you're talented creatively, it can be measured by how much money your creativity makes for you. And I really don't think that's the case. The whole emphasis on the "marketable talent" idea as being a given bothers me. I don't think it IS a given, and I don't think most creative people really look at their abilities that way. When it's there, it's there, no matter whether you plan to sell it, or share it, or just put it away in a box somewhere. You hear your characters talking, and you give them voice.
I think the satisfaction is more about having it come out looking or sounding the way you can see or hear it doing inside your head. We all know we can get a paycheque wherever -- the Mall, or Taco Time, or Starbucks, or Purolator, doesn't matter. Creativity is something so much more fundamental -- it's not what we do, it's who we are. And I've come to the conclusion that refining it is worth whatever time and effort I have to put in, not because I expect to be given bucketloads of money for it, but because I want to see what I can make when I take all of this raw creativity and refine it.
I want to lay it all on the goddamn line and see who and what I am.
I love reading about other people's creative processes. I find it interesting to compare the similarities and differences between the way they work and the way I do...
Anyway, I just read this awesome book called Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod, who is a cartoon artist. (You can find him right here.) He talks about the differences between being creative and making a living off of creativity, and what I found really interesting was that he stresses maintaining autonomy over your creativity and not selling it out just so that you can sell it. That what creative people get from sharing their work -- in whatever form it happens to take -- is something deeper than a paycheque.
I think that what gets drilled into us as members of a mostly free-market society is that money can be used as an accurate measure of success. That if you're talented creatively, it can be measured by how much money your creativity makes for you. And I really don't think that's the case. The whole emphasis on the "marketable talent" idea as being a given bothers me. I don't think it IS a given, and I don't think most creative people really look at their abilities that way. When it's there, it's there, no matter whether you plan to sell it, or share it, or just put it away in a box somewhere. You hear your characters talking, and you give them voice.
I think the satisfaction is more about having it come out looking or sounding the way you can see or hear it doing inside your head. We all know we can get a paycheque wherever -- the Mall, or Taco Time, or Starbucks, or Purolator, doesn't matter. Creativity is something so much more fundamental -- it's not what we do, it's who we are. And I've come to the conclusion that refining it is worth whatever time and effort I have to put in, not because I expect to be given bucketloads of money for it, but because I want to see what I can make when I take all of this raw creativity and refine it.
I want to lay it all on the goddamn line and see who and what I am.