Hi guys! Welcome to my first newsletter of 2023!!!!
This month is mega special because 1. it’s my first dispatch in the year of the rabbit, what’s up!!! and 2. my first subscriber-only newsletter is going to drop tomorrow. YAY! The free newsletter (that you’re reading now), which is about artistic flops and how I handle them, is public and available to everyone. Tomorrow, though, I’ll send out a big beefy list of recommendations that’ll live behind the subscriber-only paywall. Paid subscribers will also receive snail mail from me in February- if that entices you, check out my subscription tiers here. OK, QVC over, newsletter begin!
This month I want to talk about FLOPS and FAILURE- when I make something that I feel is trash and how TF I deal with that. Spoiler: I used to deal with it not well. Now, I just deal with it. Period. Please gaze upon the below flow chart of my creative process…
The spooky part of this process for me is that inevitably at some point between the “actually making the thing” and “completion” stages, I am going to experience an emotion somewhere between doubt/apprehension and complete despair/preparation for failure. Every. Time.
The, “oh shit, I thought I planned it out so well but it’s not going to work and it’s all OVER for me!!! I’m a hack!!” feelings. Generally, these feelings pass. It’s just a rough stage in the creative process for me. Sometimes, though, it is a flop.
Recently, I worked on a project that I felt TOTALLY missed the mark- granted, I am my own harshest critic, ofc. But it just really wasn’t up to par. I didn’t shoot enough images, my hard drive crashed mid-project and I lost my working files. My creative brief didn’t give clear enough instructions from the beginning. I planned my shot list too tightly, resulting in images that were too specific and just didn’t quite work when I had to change plans later. I felt like shit for a little while- I moped and was frustrated. I stayed up way too late trying to, as Kristen says, “beat [the collages] into submission” to only partial avail.
I’ve been making art for 10 years now (insane), and thus I’ve gone through some iteration of these tumultuous ass feelings for a decade. My perspective is only just now adjusting for the fact that maybe…it doesn’t matter if I make something terrible?
I recently read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic, the thesis of which is essentially that as creative people, we have to hold two truths at the same time to be functional: your creative pursuits matter deeply, but they also don't matter at all. Her sense of perspective is rooted in the fact that in the event of an apocalypse, her job (as a writer, mostly of fiction) would be rendered basically obsolete, because she would be “hard pressed to find a job that is…more essential to the smooth maintenance of the human community” than hers. Also, I liked this: “If a publisher dislikes my book, they may not publish my book, and that will make me sad, but nobody’s going to come to my home and shoot me over it.” I know this seems obvious, but truthfully when I’m in it, like, working on post on a project that I thoughtfully pitched and was super excited to deliver to the client and my team, and shit just ISN’T LOOKING RIGHT, maybe it’s the passionate and dramatic double scorpio in me, but I do sometimes feel like death is imminent!!! I will be shot for my ugly art, probably!!!
I think that maybe the trick to this way of thinking is to deploy doesn’t matter/matter (paraphrasing here) at the right times. For example, two scenarios:
I’ve been looking at the same collage for 5 hours straight without breaks, trying to make it work. I’m about to cry and am drafting an alarmist text to my manager about how I hate collage as a medium (untrue) and need to pivot starting tomorrow. Ok cool- deploy DOESN’T MATTER. What a great time to remind myself that I’m not curing cancer, I’m making a f*cking collage of tiny penguins. Who CARES. Go to sleep now, and get up tomorrow to deliver the best final product I can. And then get on with my life. And maybe be grateful for the fact that I not only have time to make stupid little collages, but that I get paid to do it. How silly! How lucky!
I’m stressed about the state of the world and feel powerless. I’m scrolling and reading news and listening to podcasts and feeling like…wow what’s the point of a silly little collage or a nice photo?...maybe I should do something more useful to ₜₕₑ wₒᵣₗd…
This would be a great time to remember that my creative output is not only valuable to the people and world around me, but is actually a life sustaining force for ME. Not to be dramatic, but I believe that artists are born with the innate, pit of the stomach NEED to make art. So if I don’t indulge that, I’m going to be, sorry, but, spiritually constipated and unable to even consider helping those around me. Deploy the IT REALLY, REALLY MATTERS mindset. (And then pick up one of my favorite books, Your Art Will Save Your Life by Beth Pickens.)
This is all to say: perspective really, really helps. Turning in work that doesn’t feel like my best, but that I’ve still given 100% effort to hurts, but not as bad as it used to. I did what I could, you know? This used to feel so shameful, like I was exposing myself as a hack by sharing something that didn’t feel perfect. I think truthfully, I was more embarrassed to admit to *myself* that I couldn’t live up to my own standards 24/7. I also didn’t have the perspective to step back and say, “I am literally photoshopping drag queens into outer space and I’m worried….that it’s not perfect…?” It is, as the TikTok girlies say, very unserious.
When all else fails, I like to think about an artist talk I saw in 2018 with one of my favorite artists, Marilyn Minter, who is 75 and has had a mega successful, decades-long career. She was going through a powerpoint presentation of her work from the 1970s up until 2018. As she flipped through her early work, she offhandedly says, “I’m going to skip ten years here” and then moves along. To think that when I’m 75 and still making art, there will be not only seasons, but YEARS and maybe even a DECADE that I just…won’t have time or interest for in an artist talk. So, if the project I’m working on at this exact moment in time is garbage…who cares?! I’ll just cut it out of the presentation later. Thank you, Marilyn, for this totally casual and offhanded comment that legitimately changed my life.
OK thanks for being here! As always, comment or email me back with thoughts/questions. talk soon <3 paid subscribers, TTY tomorrow!!!