So you think being a creative in any dedicated or professional sense is harder today than it was before? I know I do sometimes.
It has to be, right?
When I was a teenager, I figured I'd get a record deal and then it would get easier. I didn't. Crossing into my 20s, I figured a booking agent, or a job at a studio, or a few side bands that got me better-paying work more regularly would bring me closer to living an artist's life. So I tried all that too, and it also did not work. Now, 20 years later, part of me is still looking at labels and publishers and ecosystem jobs, wondering what would increase the odds. And the frustratingly honest answer is still right there, staring back at me in that plain, truthful way: just go out and do the things. Maybe you get lucky, maybe you don't. But if you love doing the thing, does it really matter?
(No. But the rules did change and that's worth a closer look.)
Jared Dillian sent me this quote from Sherman Alexie that says it better than I can, because he says it with experience (and heart, and amusing frustration):
This past weekend, at a poetry festival, I was asked for advice about publication of poetry and fiction. Well, my career began in the 90s, an era when there was mainstream coverage of books. During publicity tours, I often was interviewed on local morning TV shows. There I was, appearing on San Francisco This Morning, talking about my book of short stories at 7 in the morning. Yes, SHORT STORIES between the cooking segment and weather report. That world is gone, forever. I once sat in a mall in Riverside, CA, waiting near the news kiosk for the latest issue of Esquire magazine to hit the shelves because I had a short story in those stylish pages. Yes, ads for $1,000 watches along with my fiction about reservation Indians. To put it simply, I have no useful publication advice. You might as well ask me how to buy a used Sony Walkman.
It never really was easy, but it was a different kind of work. Being wedged between the cooking segment and the weather probably felt out of place and odd, and made you wonder why. But there was a presumed public interest in short stories, the same way there was in cooking and weather, which is amazing. Now some middle school reject, a cousin of a friend, writes on Facebook all day and that's more than enough. His Facebook post has a better shot at the local morning show than any collection of short stories you could write.
Distribution is just who looks where, and why. The business model is whoever pays for the place people are looking. That's still the rule of the day. What's changed is where the looking happens: social media and smartphones replaced TV channels and family room box sets. Whatever you make, the platforms are totally different than they were 30 years ago, and even now they only rhyme with what they were 10 years ago.
But so what?
I like knowing how hard it is. I like knowing that practice still matters in art.
Apparently AI-generated art is impressing people. The numbers are real, and somebody is consuming enough of it to make it profitable, mostly as what I can only assume is background music. Still, I have to believe that if you're hanging out at somebody's house and a super talented musician takes out her violin and wows you with that underused college degree, and then some guy pulls out his phone and says "I can do that from an app, watch," the violinist is more impressive than app-boy. Every time. And it'll be even more true in a small, less distributed, less business-focused place, where a person blows everyone's mind with something cool. Even if nobody knows exactly how to monetize it, they'll say wow.
Take it from a former Walkman, iPod, and way-too-many-streaming-platforms subscriber. Consume whatever you consume, wherever you consume it, but then get inspired and go make something.
P.S. So what? Obligatory:
