For the Creatively Conflicted Artist
Working the friction between personal expression and public reception
Writers and artists are forever working in friction. Between the purity of initial creative vision and the realities of how that work is ultimately received.
I appreciate the reflections from Ruth Allen on the creative life.
The author of Grounded and upcoming book, Weathering, says, “I love writing, but I don’t love the idea of review and criticism and opinion. I create to express myself (and extend resonance) not to open myself to ill-informed opinion.”
A tension exists in that space between commercial success and personal satisfaction. In my years of writing formally and informally, in a personal capacity and a professional capacity, I've been keenly aware of the many decisions involved when creating with a holistic approach.
Deep public engagement needs an openness and the acknowledgement that writing takes on multiple voices even when the author writes in one. Each work has an opportunity to enrich the writer's life and the lives of others.
Honest, authentic engagement with the world isn’t easy. Honest, authentic engagement online might be even more difficult. There's plenty of friction in the moments between initial ideas and fully published work.
Here are a few, not even remotely exhaustive, reasons why:
⦁ Personal creativity and integrity with no concern for likes, subscribes, readership, reward, income, and so on, looks entirely different when there is concern for one of more of those things. Sure, personal creativity and integrity can still come through, but often from another angle. Or with greater chances of burnout.
⦁ Quantifiable achievements and personal fulfillment overlap, causing friction or worse.
⦁ Consuming, Curating and Creating: These are all useful and worthwhile. But doing any of these things just for the sake of it, or without full engagement with others (and from within), brings another set of problems.
A short note from Bridget Marzo may, tangentially, provide some extra food for thought:
“...the choices we make, however subconsciously, as artists and illustrators when representing reality. What conditions them? Is it about who it’s for? And that word ‘taste’ - another can o’ worms.”
Writers and artists try hard to make the right decisions to represent in the truest way they can. Reality or fantastical fantasy. Grand descriptions or simple details. Whatever way the writer wants to portray the world in their words, they wish to do so with a particular intention.
The magic is to take that intention and make it translatable to others. The process requires internal and external factors, meaning a dialogue between the artist's personal taste and the expectations or tastes of the audience. No mean feat.
And exactly why ‘taste’ is a can of worms!
Deeper Questions
Tensions between commercial success and personal satisfaction return to the fore, as personal decisions try to map to audience expectations. Similarly, how far can the author remain authentic before their engagement with the audience suffers?
Flip it on its head and also ask: How far can the author veer away from their true expression before their engagement with the audience suffers?
After all, the raw and unfiltered writing could be what hits the reader hardest...
Such is the complexity of creative endeavours, especially online, with everything everywhere, vying for your attention. The algorithm is calling! The public wants attention, but there are only so many hours in the day. Creators and audience alike are all drowning in the instantly consumable infinity of content.
The conversation around creativity and authenticity then becomes about more than producing the work. Deeper questions arise. Why do we create? For whom are we creating?
Do we have multiple reasons?
Are those reasons fighting?
Are you, as writer/artist/creative, being hit from all sides?
And are you, at once, both the cause of the fighting and the innocent bystander?
Bridget Marzo was referring to Lizzy Stewart in her note, so it'll be useful to explore what Stewart says directly:
“Reality troubles me [in] how much reality, or realism, I bring to my characters faces and bodies. [...] Which leads me to think about taste. Primarily my own, but also I suppose I’m second guessing yours at the same time. What do I like? What do you like?”
The friction is real.
When you read Stewart's piece in full, you can see the process of assuming a reader and what their character would be. In a way, the audience performs as a set of characters who need whittling down to those best placed to keep the author's narrative intact and alive, filtering out of the creator's imagination and into a wider expanse of appreciation.
Bear in mind that even the most real-life audience isn't always sure of itself. We're all lost, waiting to be found.
Tara McMullin puts this nicely:
“I don't know anyone who hasn't molded themselves to fit a little more comfortably into the containers that school, work, family, and community have provided for us. There are parts of ourselves we hide, parts we disown, parts we fail to explore. Society teaches us not to wonder about our own identities and the ways those identities make it harder to access certain spaces. We learn to perceive our differences as deficits rather than facts that deserve accommodation.”
Just as Stewart grapples with the realities of drawing and the expectations of her readers, individuals navigating their identities must contend with external pressures and internal discoveries that shape their self-narratives.
The act of the creative is, therefore, almost an impossibility.
At the same time, knowing that feels ever so freeing for me, which is why I'll happily write in different manners to suit the situation, and why I've been happy to write to briefs that don't fit with my own personal writing preferences. What purpose would it serve to cause a scene over style? None of us are right, because it's only a matter of taste. Yes, that can of worms!
McMullin continues:
“Wondering about others encourages us to wonder about ourselves. Taking on some of the workload of access for others reminds us that others can lend us a helping hand, too. When we see others for who they are on their own terms, we have more capacity for seeing ourselves on our own terms.”
As creators, there is great benefit to engaging in curious, wonder-filled self-empathy. The deeper we serve our own narratives and challenges and triumphs and past, the more our authenticity can speak for others. Knowing your own mind is a step to knowing the minds of others.
However...
Multiple Assessments
We need to go back to the start again, revisiting that tension in the space between personal satisfaction and commercial success.
Joel J Miller points out one of the biggest fictional successes:
“While his royalty checks no doubt salve the humiliation, thriller writer Dan Brown can’t publish a sentence without critics noting his godawful prose. When Inferno came out in 2013, reviewers savaged the effort—some by parodying his style for laughs, others by more direct pronouncement...What Brown has going for him that lesser novelists do not? A work ethic. The work might be shoddy, but he reliably cranks it out.”
At this stage, you may think that Dan Brown moved toward the success element at the expense of his own satisfaction.
Not so. The Star Tribune reported in 2018 that Brown finds the bad reviews difficult. He said, "I just write the novel that I want to read, and I just hope other people want to read it".
In a way, the tension expands into new territory here. Despite writing the book he wants to read and gaining success too, the critical reviews still hurt.
Given this subjective can of worms called ‘taste’, what are the critics assessing? What are the millions of readers assessing? What is Brown assessing?
Success in creative work is multifaceted, and full of hurdles along the way. It's no wonder that all writers, regardless of how often performed and published, struggle to express their intentions with ease.
Again, the friction is real.
Changing Territories
Writers treading one path may find a sort of success that doesn't sit right with them. But the popularity and hearts only make that path look more tempting. At one point or another, inspiration and drive is replaced by churning out or trying to write in a voice that doesn't align with the author's true intentions.
I've heard stories where creators become afraid to veer off into new territory. They fear the pushback from fans. They worry that it'll look weak.
Writer and speaker, Harriet Minter, suggests looking at correcting course in a more positive fashion:
“...changing your mind is about being honest about your own desires and then fully going after them. It’s an act of bravery to admit you got something wrong and you’re now going to do your best to right it. You’re going to choose yourself rather than staying somewhere that makes you miserable. That’s the side of the bed I want to lie on.”
Much like a character arc or a hero's journey, there are twists and turns, but they don't need to be dead ends. By choosing yourself, as Minter explains, you're in a better place to work with the friction that none of us creatives can simply run away from.
If the friction is real, our response to it should be real-er.
And that means I can write real-er for lols in a more serious piece of writing. 😁
Add emojis too if I like. Take that, expectations!
Recognising and honouring your true desires takes self-awareness and that fearless understanding of the need for friction. If you want to change your mind and move to a totally different genre, for instance, it can be done.
Roald Dahl did. Known mostly for writing children's books, Dahl spent a number of years writing short stories for adults.
Dahl didn't so much change his mind, but he did work in different genres. He chose both. In other words, you're also allowed to try your hand at different types of writing. Minter’s words still stand: Choose yourself.
I know it's scary. Because everything you publish is a risk.
"If you're not willing to look like an idiot in the short term, you will never look like a genius in the long term." — Shane Parrish
Every time you send your art into the vastness of the internet, or your book is published to the world, that special object that you developed, cared for, and doted upon, becomes everyone else's object. An object that you hope will be treated with just as much care as you gave it, but that you know may suffer the shock of the real world.
That sounds far too melodramatic if we're talking about a quick social post about how yummy that cake was, or why the pothole outside your house is REALLY ANNOYING!!!
But our creativity is still our attempt at being heard, and understood, and loved.
So we need to recognise that some of the friction has been introduced unreasonably. That Instagram photo of the delicious cake is more content than art. Kerani Arpaia, a fantasy artist and writer, says "It’s like the internet decided that we needed a word other than art to describe what it is when people put their ideas out into the world".
As writers, we need to make the distinction, because not everyone is going to. Once we've handed our art to everyone else, they may see content. We must always see art. Arpaia continues:
"There’s the thing you make (your art) then there’s all the stuff that happens around trying to promote, share, sell the thing you make (your content)...I know it’s not realistic to expect that everything that I share online will be art—but it’s important that I don’t mistake content for art. They serve two very different purposes. One is for me, one is for other people."
The art is the inspiration, the content is the obligation. True artistic expression must come from within before the external pressures get involved. Remember what Lizzy Stewart said. Although there is an act of assuming the external reader, Stewart is primarily looking to her own taste and ideas.
All this ends up meaning that you may still create art that doesn't see the light of day, because the art is all about you. Your creative work can be introspective, healing, and deliberately exploring your internal processes. Your honest and authentic engagement with the world may do better when you have that honest and authentic engagement with yourself too.
Jenny Lawson mostly shares art at the nicer end of the scale. But Lawson explains, "...sometimes the strange things I draw are not lovely at all and I don't usually share those. But I think they are just as important when it comes to using art as a sort of therapy".
By deeming this unshared art as "just as important", we get to the heart of creativity. In the same way this piece started, appreciating that Ruth Allen creates to express herself, the tension between success and satisfaction appears for reasons that go beyond the art itself.
Vulnerabilities can be released to the world too. Many vulnerable writings and artworks have met great critical acclaim. The risks with the friction can pay off. In fact, the act of making the art public could be part of the therapy and healing. Just as creativity can work in all directions, the way we handle our emotions and other inspirations can be just as varied in route.
The desire for likes and attention can be the inspiration. The need for income may bring forth a different vibe. Raw emotion may be desperate to bundle out in all its difficult glory. Everything is on the table. Private, public, individual, collective, all the things.
The path is difficult. You need self-awareness, curiosity, and a drive to create. You need to recognise the friction and the hurdles along the way. And you need to work at the pace and exposure that works for you.
The act of creating reflects the many complexities, frictions, and tensions we experience as individuals and as a wider public. As we attempt to somehow express, we also attempt to somehow relate. Our writing and art serves as many things: a window on the world, a bridge to gap, a light to shine, a problem to ponder, a hand to reach out.
Authentic engagement is hard with so many other considerations in the mix. None of this is exclusive to art. To be honest, even 'content' is best placed in the knowledge that friction exists there too, and that the honest engagement tends to yield the best results.
What those results are and how those results look? I guess that depends on your taste.
But I'm done with that can of worms for now. Anyway, it'll open up again soon enough. It always does.
This is a brilliant read. I find myself wondering how my book will be received because my writing tends to be more on the branding and business side…and memoir is so different! But I’m curious to see how it lands when the time comes to share. Thanks for curating this. So, so useful!