Bettering yourself, part 7: making something

There is an epidemic of low self-esteem across the globe. It’s not endearing if you don’t do something because you’re underconfident—it’s just irritating. It’s failure by default, which means you reach the point where you would irritate people less by making the thing you’ve always wanted to make, even if it’s a fucking monstrosity, than by moping around with inertia.

I would say the real fear is not the quality of the product you haven’t made but whether or not you’re bothering people, by making them look at you or whatever.

I just received feedback for a short story I wrote about an artist. Another writer said it was interesting she wondered whether or not her art was doing anything at all, let alone about to receive an award. I thought, ‘An award? Why would he say that?’ Then I remembered that most people who make art probably imagine a big crowd of people cheering around them, some golden statuette in their hands, long before the piece is finished. I used to have that illusion, of course, and losing it was hard work, but it’s gone now. Instead, I simply think life is better when you do the thing than when you don’t, and I’m not saying that’s good enough for me; I’m saying it has to be. I have to accept the reality of the situation and use it to my advantage, rather than hide away from it and pretend it isn’t going on.

There are central truths about making art, and every artist must choose how they personally respond to the questions. What’s the point? What if it fails? What if no one notices? What if I don’t win the competition? What if I do but I’m far from the best anyway and I know it? Now, many people might comfort themselves by saying the realisation of these fears is unlikely. They might say, ‘But you never know! You might be the best, win the thing, make the point in the way it hasn’t been made before.’ Fair enough, but I think the more interesting answer is to the following question: Say the worst happens—how do you proceed anyway? Answering that question is what gives an artist persistence, which may well be their most important feature. And no talk of success or failure: I’m a firm believer in “You only fail if you quit”; and yet that doesn’t necessarily mean you succeed by persisting, does it? I don’t know.

I don’t mind how the artist answers the questions, but I will be concerned if they haven’t addressed the questions at all. I don’t have time for the art of someone who isn’t conscious of the world around them. But whether or not someone acknowledges these questions and chooses to find an answer to them—either explicitly or otherwise (if you paint a painting, it’s implicit that you think there is a purpose to its existence, for example, whether or not you sat and asked yourself if there is)—these questions still exist in the universe.

So say you make the thing: you could still fail to get it in the right hands of people. But how do you know whose hands it’s supposed to be in, given that we discount how complex other people are? You can’t fundamentally know one way or another, which means you always run the risk of pissing off a few people. I get it: but that doesn’t mean don’t try and find your audience afterwards. Maybe only every tenth person is a keeper, fine. Haruki Murakami said managing a bar prepared him for writing, because even if only every tenth customer returned, eventually he had enough of a clientele base to run a business. But rejection and the difficulty of securing an audience aren’t unique to the writing world.

The universe is 71.4% dark energy, 24% dark matter, and 4.6% STUFF. Physicists might be excited by what’s in that 95.4%, but not me, ahaha! I mean, you’re one in seven billion, occupying this little space on Earth, which is some infinitesimal percentage of the stuff we can see, which is only 4.6% of the stuff there is, and you’re so concerned with your own personal destiny, wrapped up in your everyday bullshit, miraculously, as I say, but way too much. Just make the thing, please. Just go, whoomp, there it is. A little less nothing in the universe. That’s pretty damn neat.

If you really can’t do it, who cares? No one asked you to do it anyway. Now doesn’t that thought suck? So don’t think it; just make the thing!