Real Artists Don't Starve (Jeff Goins)
Like Hook before it I picked this book up in the hopes that it would have some general advice for a way of thinking and approaching the challenges in front of Pronoia and myself.
Real Artists Don’t Starve challenges the notion that suffering for one’s art is noble or even beneficial and uses a number of classic and modern case studies to show what are effective strategies for artists working today.
Like so many other books in this vein it depressed me for two reasons:
1. many of the people outline are extraordinary. Legitimate geniuses who many people recognized the value in right away and they needed to work to carve out time, find their niche, or believe in themselves. As has been documented in various places my work has been rejected by nearly everyone who has encountered it, and it is hard to find a foothold from which to begin my climb. Put simply: I don’t think I am extraordinary or can ever become that, so where do I start?
Do I strive forward stubbornly making my writing my way and hope that against all odds I find someone in power who likes the cut of my jib? At this point that seems like a losing battle that’s only going to continue to hurt me.
2. Almost all books about artists focus on solo-practitioners. Although some time is spent on Tywla Tharp and a movie producer, the vast majority of this book is for visual artists, prose writers, sculptors, etc. People who by and large don’t need other people to buy into their vision to create their art: they just need people to buy-in to be the audience. It is hard to build the team to exhibit play-writing, and then once you do you have the additional challenge of finding the audience.
So I continue to be frustrated as I can’t find the way to actually get started. There doesn’t seem to be a place for me until someone else decides I’m worth paying attention to.
There are a few things that the book suggests which I can put into practice: it says to expose your process and make work in public. Although that is hard in Houston, it was the basic idea of what we were trying to do with Production Meeting and I think I will need to find ways to keep myself and my work visible in-between projects.
The section in the book about being paid for one’s work is relevant to my work as a producer: as we decide how things for Space Train will move forward our biggest question is whether it is better to build community through a small stipend to show our respect for the artists we have, or to ask for people to share their skills and benefit from any profit accrued. Although I am still hesitant to pay artists under-market (for psychological reasons, not financial ones) I think the book has convinced me that paying people, and myself, is the best way to go forward.
