Art’s Your Product, Not Your Self

I needed this reminder. It’s been seven or so months since I worked on a novel, and restarting after so long is pants-wettingly terrifying. What if I’ve forgotten how to do it? What if it’s all crap? Why am I doing this anyway when I already have a full-time job and more items on my to-do list than I can handle?

Oh yeah. Right. Because making art is fun when you remember it’s just a thing you made and not a ruler by which to measure the worth of your soul.

Cool. Yeah. Right. I remember that bit. >.<

Tweet by @Meowmocha12: You forgot to make a pie slice for things like crippling doubt, criticising your own work, and self-loathing. Those are major parts of the writing process. (Well, in most writers' pie charts, at least.) 

Response by @mstiefvater: I use the time some might allocate to these things for more editing instead or possibly taking up a new musical instrument or other hobby. Loving yourself and the process is fun, cheap, and easy to try at home both alone and with friends!

Second tweet from @mstiefvater: No, but seriously: I am not my creative works, and they are not me. Failure of them does not make me a failure of a human and a success of them doesn't make me an awesome person.
Tweet 3: "BUT MAGGIE how do you know if your'e worth anything?" 

At some point in my 20s I decided to assume that I was All That, just as a baseline, & then just try as hard as I could at everything I did.

Look, it's a lot simpler than trying to attach your self worth to something external. 

Tweet 4: Really, guys, think about this using other people. Someone will always be a better artist than you: so are they better people than you? Someone will always be a worse artist than you: so are they worth less? 

It gets weird really fast. Better to just disconnect the two.

It’s somewhat ironic, really, that if you want to have a long and relatively happy life as an artist, you actually need to stop thinking of your art as Important. Valuable, sure, not least because it helps keep you sane and provides enjoyment and pleasure in your life. But the minute you start thinking of it as Important, the minute you lapse into that Tortured Artiste mentality, your art is actually screwed. At least in the long term.

One day, I will internalise this lesson enough that I don’t have to keep fighting for it every time I take a pause in writing, ah ha ha-ha ha-ha.

Go make something, guys. Make something trivial, something fun, something totally unimportant – because the act of making art like that has value.

Go do something utterly unimportant, and totally valuable. <3

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