THE DILETTANTE SURVIVAL GUIDE
ie. “How to Do Several Different Kinds of Art at Once” or “I Forgot How That Saying About Jacks Of All Trades Goes”
I’ve kind of been at an impasse recently with my creative work. Fortunately, I’m in the best physical and mental space that I’ve been in in probably my entire life right now, and I have plenty of energy and free time to be working on whatever creative projects I desire. Last fall I finally got the degree I’d been working on since the pandemic, and as hellish as that was, I’ve now been freed up from the overarching Big Goal I was putting off much of my creative drive for. The state of the world outside me is absolutely atrocious so I’m trying to preserve myself by working on what is within my control. That all has lead me to a place where I’m spending a lot of time on various creative projects but also questioning what it’s all leading to and whether I’m doing enough.
(A/N: This means that I’m out of haitus and I should be posting more regularly on here soon. And site updates should be more than just cosmetic now. I have been adding a lot to link hell, check it out!)
But this space I’ve had has made me realize that I want more for myself as a creative. Now, I’m trying to figure out how to get there, especially since I don’t only want to be a visual artist, or a fantasy author, or a web designer. Other creatives who are author/artists, visual artists/filmmakers, et cetera et cetera have always resonated with me, sometimes I am in awe with their dedication to presenting the same creative vision through two different media, sometimes what I admire is their ability to juggle several different creative quests at once. And here I am doing it now: writing to you a blog post on this jank ass blog o’mine. I consider my main bread-and-butter novel writing, but it’s an incredibly long process so I’ve taken up other pursuits in the meantime. And there’s still so much I want to do! Outside of my main novel series Oracle Bone, I do clothing modification and put a lot of effort into styling myself the way I want, I’ll pick up a craft here-and-there, I’ll make candles, buttons, pins, stickers, whatever. At some point I’d love to start a YouTube channel, because I enjoy video editing and it would be a fun way to present my ideas. Pretty much the only creative pursuit I have no interest in is music lol.
I give you this context not just because I think you need insight into my dazzling life but also to preface all of this as advice I’ve tried giving myself. Without further ado:
Accept Yourself as a Renaissance Woman
Or Renaissance Man. Or Enlightenment Woman, or Great Awakening Person, or what have you..
This is mostly just the acceptance that I am a multifaceted creative and if I chose any one of my interests to pursue alone, I would ultimately be unhappy. As in, if I was given a monkey’s paw kind of proposition where I could instantly become more acclaimed as an author but lose my ability to draw, I wouldn’t take it. I specifically taught myself to draw as a secondary creative outlet to writing, since I also care deeply about being able to visually show others the places and people I have created and love. The closest thing to a main creative schtick I have had is being an author, I started writing when I was 11 and I have never stopped; it also is the kind of art I create that is the most dear to me, the most intimate, the most personal, the most involved. However, visual and written art exist in tandem for me and I honestly couldn’t bring myself to care about one without the other.
Traditionally, creative people get notoriety by being one main thing, and then maybe having some side projects, such as being a musician first, and a painter second. This means my path to success will look differently than people that can devote themselves entirely to one or maybe two creative endeavors. Namely, it might be slower, more multifaceted, spread across different audiences and communities, and have different factors at play for how quickly I can complete projects. I often see other creative people online who have succeeded in a way I would like and feel frustrated that I haven’t achieved the same thing yet, so it is useful to keep in mind that everyone does art with different factors in their life, and so success comes in different forms. If someone is the same age as me and has spent the same amount of time working on their art as I have, except they have only worked on improving one particular kind of art, then it makes sense that they are further along since they haven’t split their time in several directions. However, that’s just not a thing I am willing or probably even able to do, leading me to my next point:
When there’s wind in the sails, go!
One of the best things I’ve learned about existing as an adult is that when the mood strikes and I have the motivation to do something, then I’m just going to do it, regardless if that’s what i’m “supposed” to be doing or if its not that urgent. For example, if I was about to make dinner but I get the urge to vacuum, I’m just gonna fuckin vacuum. Even if I don’t technically need to, it means that’s one less thing to try to pony up the willpower to do later. Even if I can’t get it all done then, doing something is always preferable to nothing and I can hopefully figure out what my next step to finishing it is when I’m able to pick it up again.
How this relates to being creative is that structure can be helpful, but can’t have the final say. One of my first plans was to organize my creative time on a schedule, so on the first week of a month I would focus on writing, the second on drawing, the third on web design, and the fourth a free for all. This worked terribly, since I don’t know where my motivation will end up ultimately being. No, inspiration isn’t a gift from the gods we have to spend all our lives hoping and praying for, and yes, sitting down to actually fucking do the thing is the best way to feel motivated to do it again in the future. Even still, on my ‘writing week’ I might find that I actually have a lot more interest in fixing a bug on my website and adding widgets to it. So, even if that’s not what I set out to do, I’m going to do it because hell, I’ve got to do it at some point and it’s not every day I have the attention span and patience to sit and work through my code not working the way I want it to. And I feel great being productive by working on something that I feel like doing in that moment, certainly much better than I would by forcing myself to work through it later.
tl;dr Harnessing productive procrastination urges can be helpful, because it’s better to work with than against your own behaviors. Speaking of which:
Don’t Force Yourself To Work In Ways That You Know You Don’t Work
No, one more cute planner with a gold embossed title and little stickers in it isn’t going to make me work analog. I personally despise taking paper notes, 90% of the time I would rather take no notes at all than write something on a piece of paper. I have some functional reasons for why this is (messy handwriting, harder to revise and organize them, they might get damaged or lost), but I mostly chalk it up to a matter of taste. I’ve found through trial and error that I do really well with open-ended productivity software that lets me throw together plans and ideas as loosely as I want to (if you want some examples, go to link hell).
In the simplest words, if you’ve already tried something and it hasn’t worked for you, it’s not that you’re a fucked up, unproductive cretin who isn’t trying hard enough. It just means you need to do something else. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, after all. It might not feel natural at first or take a learning curve, your ideal method might be something that you had a bad first impression of, but forcing yourself to do something you already know isn’t working and that you often don’t even like is not going to be the answer.
The flip side of this is simply noticing how your workflow functions. Not in a critical or proud way, not to evaluate it at all, but just to understand what your natural tendencies are. For example, I am by nature a very piecemeal worker. Even writing this article I have skipped around from paragraph to paragraph several times and sometimes drop my thought mid-sentence because I have a good addition in mind to another segment and I really don’t wanna lose it. And in working on different creative projects, I have to make a call on whether I try to override this instinct (I can to an extent, sometimes forcing myself to work A-Z has its benefits), or just let myself at it as-is if I feel like I’ll make progress at a pace that satisfies me. I also don’t care much for extensive to-do lists, pomodoro timers or a lot of the big name brand productivity systems with some Japanese or Swedish name, so I simply don’t force myself to do them.
You’ll Never Be at Peak Productivity
Because it’s a fuckin’ meme. I’m not gonna dump a whole rant on why capitalism sucks because it grades us by arbitrary standards of material output, because I’m sure you know how that tune goes by now(I sure do, thanks sociology degree). The short of it is that we are measured up against very unhealthy and unrealistic standards of how to work, and that play is ultimately another form of work, and so even when doing the things we’re most passionate about, a nagging feeling can sink in that what you’re doing is inadequate, even worthless, and you’re not enough yet. Or you’re not doing it cleanly enough, or quickly or efficiently. Oh, beautiful, beautiful efficiency. If you hear a voice like this: You need productivity to make product! You need to be efficient! You need to be more! Duct-tape its mouth shut and throw it in the basement!!
Instead of chasing the capitalist dragon’s tail, how about we reprogram ourselves?
No One Is At 100% All Of The Time
Anyone with a chronic disability knows that the way you wake up each day changes: some days are just shitty, you can only really focus on taking care of yourself because you’re at low capacity, other days you can have plenty of energy and motivation and can handle way more (this is basically a different metaphor for spoons). And there’s not always a reason, and the only way out is through.. It’s important to use the days when you’re at 80% to make plans for when you’re at 50%, and when you’re at 50%, you have to just accept you’re not gonna be at peak performance every fucking day. No one can after all and putting up the appearance is just going to mean quietly struggling.
No One (Accomplishment) is Going To Save You
A variant on one of my favorite mottos, “wherever you go, there you are”. A lot of creative people are quite ambitious about some kind of goal, usually either getting famous or getting something Out There (myself included), which is all good and dandy of course. It’s just when it becomes a goal to fixate on, it can look like it means absolutely everything and anything else just pales in comparison. But what then, what about after you get your goal, or if you never get there at all, or it takes a hell of a lot longer than you wish it did? What if your ambition hinges on something ultimately out of your control, like blowing up big or getting recognition from The Greats? Then it may never happen, or even if it does, what would be your next move? The incurable itch for something more is a really frustrating part of having ambitions, and ultimately it’s healthiest to realize you do not need your ambitions to save you.
What’s the simplest achievement you can be happy with? The bar doesn’t need to be on the floor, but it doesn’t need to be in the stratosphere either! You don’t become an artist when your work gets shown at the MoMA, but maybe you do when you post your first work online, or you finish your first work and keep it privately, or even when you start. It’s better to think of achievements as milestones to progress towards and move past rather than a you-have-it-or-you-don’t behemoth where every stake is simultaneously on the line. Then you’ll probably just freeze up and not even do anything.
There’s No One Right Way to Do Anything
Adherence to arbitrary routines we have been taught (when you know it doesn’t work for you) is unhelpful. Shame and a sense of failure about not adhering to said arbitrary routines is especially unhelpful. Don’t want to get up at 5AM, jump in an ice bath, run five miles naked and then draft your novel? Then fucking don’t. If you simply don’t have the time or bandwidth to be doing 2500 word sprints, then you don’t need to. Even if you don’t have a convenient excuse, or if that’s what you used to do, or you’ve been trying to change to do it. Move at whatever pace and with whatever workflow works for you, really the only person who’s going to criticize you on this is you. Is a SWAT team going to break down my door if I don’t finish revising a chapter by the end of the week?
There is No Perfect Work
It’s liberating to release yourself from the unspoken expectation that you will somehow never, ever make mistakes. In the way that even our favorite work by other storytellers isn’t immune to criticism — it can be poorly aged material, dated and for its time or doomed by its own implicit themes. In many of these cases, the original authors weren’t malevolent spirits but simply unaware of their own biases or just unable to tell the future. We will always have our blindspots, and each decision your creative license grants you, will give someone a reason to critique you. Moreover, there is no universal way to encounter a piece of art; everyone brings their own baggage into their personal definitions of good and bad, regardless of how “objective” they say they are (if they do say that, run). Even if your art’s not perfect, it will have a right to exist. My novels don’t need to have peak characterization, the perfect balance of dialogue and description and jaw-dropping genre 11 times out of 10. To exist imperfectly is better than to not exist at all.
Your Life Is Not an Optimization Problem
Like many other ideas in my terrible life, this comes from a tumblr post. From tumblr user @dragonsblowingoutbirthdaycandles:
“your life is not an optimization problem, as in you'll never achieve the perfect daily routine, sleep schedule, coping mechanisms, mannerisms, fashion sense etc. even after years and years of healing and improvement and self-discovery. you will never be so good at life that you manage to utilize every waking moment. its great to be productive and all but sometimes you'll suck ass. sometimes you'll take eight hours to be done with a twenty minute job. you'll prioritize the wrong thing. you'll sleep for 12 hrs just to avoid being awake. you'll relapse. and you'll relapse again. you'll forget to turn in the assignment. you'll order too little food. life is far too large and complex for you to even experience it completely, much less try to make sense of and control it. you can't. please give up on that and be at peace with the hours you lose. they are not separate from your life. “
