Ignore Everybody - MacLeod, Hugh [5]
Their business model is basically to throw all the pasta against the wall, and see which noodle sticks. The ones that fall to the floor are just forgotten.
Publishers are just middlemen. That’s all. If artists could remember that more often, they’d save themselves a lot of aggravation.
Not that good publishers don’t exist. The groovy cats publishing this book, for example, are lovely people. But by the time we found each other, I didn’t need them. I was already busy writing my blog, drawing, and doing other stuff. I already had a sizable audience, a creative outlet, and a good income stream. Though it is nice to see my name in print, it wasn’t something I was dreaming about. I didn’t see it as a ticket to something.
Thanks to the Internet, you can now build your own thing without having somebody else “discovering” you first. Which means when the big boys come along offering you deals, you’ll be in a much better position to get exactly what you want from the equation. Big offers are a good thing, but personal sovereignty matters a whole lot more over the long run.
6. You are responsible for your own experience.
Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, meaningful, or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is.
EVERY CREATIVE PERSON IS LOOKING FOR “THE Big Idea.” You know, the one that is going to catapult him or her out of the murky depths of obscurity and onto the highest planes of cultural rock stardom.
The one that’s all love-at-first-sight with the Zeitgeist.
The one that’s going to get them invited to all the right parties, metaphorical or otherwise.
So naturally you ask yourself, if and when you finally come up with The Big Idea, after years of toil, struggle, and doubt, how do you know whether or not it is “The One”?
Answer: You don’t.
There’s no glorious swelling of existential triumph.
That’s not what happens.
All you get is this rather quiet, kvetchy voice inside you that seems to say, “This is totally stupid. This is utterly moronic. This is a complete waste of time. I’m going to do it anyway.”
And you go do it anyway.
Second-rate ideas like glorious swellings far more. Second-rate ideas like it when the creator starts believing his own heroic-myth crap. “Me! The Artist! Me! The Bringer of Light! Me! The Creator! Me! The Undiscovered Genius!!!” It keeps the second-rate idea alive longer.
7. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the “creative bug” is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my crayons back, please.”
SO YOU’VE GOT THE ITCH TO DO SOMETHING. Write a screenplay, start a painting, write a book, turn your recipe for fudge brownies into a proper business, build a better mousetrap, whatever. You don’t know where the itch came from, it’s almost like it just arrived on your doorstep, uninvited. Until now you were quite happy holding down a real job, being a regular person . . .
Until now.
You don’t know if you’re any good or not, but you think you could be. And the idea terrifies you. The problem is, even if you are good, you know nothing about this kind of business. You don’t know any publishers or agents or venture capitalists or any of these fancy-shmancy kind of folk. You have a friend who’s got a cousin in California who’s into this kind of stuff, but you haven’t talked to your friend for over two years . . .
Besides, if you write a book, what if you can’t find a publisher? If you invent a new piece of world-changing software, what if you can’t find a financial backer? If you write a screenplay, what if you can’t find a producer? And what if the producer turns out to be a crook? You’ve always worked hard your whole life, you’ll be damned if you’ll put all that effort into something if there ain’t no pot of gold at the end of this dumb-ass rainbow . . .
Heh. That’s not your wee voice asking