I realize that if I keep writing about my obsession with the creative process, I'm going to have to change the name of this blog to Monogamy. Having said that...I don’t even know what I was reading this morning. (This is the way 90% of my statements begin each day, btw). I don’t remember what led me to this career blog, what RSS thread I followed, or what newspaper article pointed me in her direction, but there I found myself, sifting through archives and jumping around like a bean, hot on hyperlinks. Brazen Careerist: Penelope Trunk.
“The starving artist routine is total bullshit” catches my attention first. Go figure. I would rather start a conversation with a provocative, definitive statement any day over something tired and truthful. (The idea of this makes me laugh because I know I’m about to get myself into trouble here.) I mean, seriously. I can talk for hours with someone who is a provocative bullshitter (I mean this in the most light-hearted sense) as opposed to someone who is going to bore my socks off with safe things to say.*
So “the starving artist…” line catches my attention and seconds later I’m on a tough-love kind of posting about building a career as an artist. Halfway through the article I not only agree with everything Ms. Penelope says, I’m half-tempted to cut-n-paste it to Flirtationships and call it my own (Flirting with copyright infringement? Flirting with disaster, perhaps?) Her advice is as follows:
1.You cannot do art if you are starving. Literally. Romantic notions aside, its difficult to make art when you know you can’t even pay your rent, she says. “Your brain cannot stop solving [the problem of being kicked out on the street] long enough to solve the problem of what is truth and beauty.” Good point. In fact, brilliant.
2.Art emanating from a black hole is a choice. Don’t kid yourself, says Penelope, “Your art reflects your surroundings, and you can live like a pauper, but that limits the range of your art.” [Insert ‘why I spend all my money on fashion’ argument here]. Surrounding yourself with beauty begets beauty, just as happiness begets happiness, and so on. She makes me chuckle though, talking about the stories she used to write, back when she couldn't afford to go out with her friends. Her mentor suggested that she add a character so that the narrator could have a conversation, and it struck Penelope as a revolutionary idea. Oh dear…
3.Real artists will make art no matter what. You already have all the tools you need to make art …if, in fact, you’re really an artist. “Because making art comes from a place that you cannot stop. People who need to make art make art no matter what,” says the Wise One (and by now she’s on par with Twyla).
The next thing out of her mouth gives me a pang of Washington Post-ism but I love it anyway –because she takes the words right out of my mouth. “Do you know how many blog posts I throw out? Maybe two a week,” she says. I’m gathering that I’m a bit more ADD than my new friend, though, considering I throw away about six posts per week, but hey...
“…Sometimes something happens and I absolutely have to write about it, and I see, from the beginning, that there’s no way I’ll be able to relate it to [my blog topic], so it’s going to end up in the blogging trash can. But I write it anyway.”
And so do I.
4.You do not need to quit your day job. (Noooooooooo! No! No! No! She can’t be saying this!) I hate the truth in this statement just about as much as I hate when people ask me what I do when I’m in front of people who already know what I do (particularly coworkers). So lately I've been confidently telling people that I’m a writer, but that I work at a financial planning firm to “keep the lights on.” Try my strategy. It’s got a pretty remarkable effect on the conversation.
Don’t tell Penelope that your day job is crushing your soul (But… but…). She’ll tell you that her entire blog is about how your soul does not depend on your job or your job or your paycheck. I’m telling you, this woman is the real deal. Right, Alanna? Penelope says that, “if you are an inherently creative thinker, you probably bring that to whatever job you have.” I think my mom told me the same thing once.
5.You are not a better artist if you can do it full time. Good to know. I wish I could say here that she saved me a lifetime of wondering what it would be like to travel the world a laHemingway-style, but the jury's still out.
So I’m feeling pretty good at the end of this article, and she hooks me with the last sentence: “And, I leave you with one of my favorite posts, that I never get to link to, about me making myself crazy being an artist.” I’m not even going to pretend I had anything better to be doing at work this morning, so naturally, I followed the enticing jump.
That’s when it happened. The words: How to cope with self-doubt, emblazoned across the top of my screen in towering, extra bold 600-point font. The first thing I did was look around me to make sure no one else noticed. The second thing I did was find all the reassurance I’ve been looking for:
“Tonight I am so upset I can’t even finish my stack of reading,” Penelope writes. “I fear I will read somewhere in my pile that the Nobel Prize committee has decided to make 100 simultaneous awards and they are all to people I know and now everyone I ever talk to will have a Nobel Prize and I won’t [...irrational daydreams. check]. Tonight I am worrying that other people have greatness and there is a finite amount of greatness and it is slipping out of my hands […said Lindsey. Jesus, this woman is reading my mind]. Also, it is embarrassing to admit to wanting greatness knowing that there is a risk that I will not achieve it.”
From there, she moves through a few familiar phases: 1) emotional eating (though I may have opted for a martini happy hour and cheese plate) 2) bringing others down to make yourself feel better 3) refocusing on her own career and 4) finally, pushing past ugly face of self-doubt. I’m not alone! As it turns out, gosh darnit, every artist has moments of self-doubt –they just don’t like to talk about it, let alone post it where Google can find it.
So tonight, my friends, let me leave you with something to soothe that secret bit of self-doubt you occasionally hide from your friends. Because for the time being, it’s soothed mine:
“Everyone has her moments of huge self-doubt, often in the face of someone else’s grand success. But there is not finite success in the world. There is just a finite amount of people who can stomach the pain of wanting success so much.”
*(And immediately I want to take that back. But I’ll let the statement stand on the condition that you know there are exceptions to this rule. Such as a bad discussion of religion, sex, and abortion in a terrible Chinese restaurant outside Beijing with Jaime, from Semester at Sea.)
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