Art Is Manufactured — Get Over It

You’ll be a better artist…

Taylor Swift

I’m fighting with myself. I’m watching my contracts get larger, my opportunities get bigger, my future get brighter, and I’m fighting it. I’m here trying to figure out what’s the formula. What can I do to ensure, or at least give myself the best chance, for continuing this success.

So I comb through all my articles, read through emails, make note of the reader engagement and which pieces get the best reaction. Now I’m researching, comparing, breaking down point for point what’s worked before and how I can apply that to future success.

Exhausting; yes. But is it necessary? Is this constant analysis one of the factors that sets the greats apart from the ones who get halted or struggle to get over the edge?

Now I’m wondering what’s real. Like what does it really mean to be authentic? My last post, for instance, I spoke from my heart. It wasn’t planned out, per say. I said precisely what I felt and it connected. But I would be lying if I didn’t admit that there was strategy behind it.

For one, the title. It got scrapped like six times before settling on the one I published. But I knew the title I did go with would attract the most attention. I knew that because I could feel the temperature of the world and pair it against the tone of my readers. Do I lose points for that? Is that not being true to my art? Or really, is it just being clever? Is it wrong to be deliberate to achieve a certain goal? Because I’m getting better at playing the game, understanding the tone of the world and what topic would likely make a ripple, does that somehow put me in the same box as a pop star or blockbuster Hollywood movie?

Let’s Separate Creating from Selling

I think the only way to make sense of all this is to place creating and selling in two different piles. I once heard Jay-Z say that when he’s in the studio, he’s an artist, but as soon as he steps out of the booth, he’s a marketer. When I think of building my career as a writer, I’m starting to understand more and more why that frame of mind makes a lot of sense.

There’s a bit of manufacturing behind the success of any artistic creation.

I’m going to leave that last sentence to sit on its own so you writers can really let that sink in. And I’ll say it again: There’s a bit of manufacturing behind the success of any artistic creation. And that includes writing.

The guilt I’m feeling, the guilt all of us creatives feel for “selling” our work is perfectly normal. Yes, I still fight with myself everyday. I have the same thoughts many of us writers and creatives share about keeping it real. But what I always come back to is that I want to make a living. I work hard to put these words together, endless editing to get my thoughts exactly right, what’s wrong with using some learned strategies to draw attention to that work?

That’s one perspective. The other thing that becomes questionable is what happens when you do find that secret sauce? Is it still artistic to essentially recreate the same thing over and over again? Or more precisely, is it OK to recreate iterations of the same thing over and over again and still think of yourself as creative?

Is part of being creative pushing yourself beyond these manufactured strategies? Or is there still creativity in consistently delivering what is essentially the same product? Once you’ve found your audience, narrowed your output, and continuously produce works that fit within this format, should we celebrate or criticize this type of art?

Umm guess what? We all celebrate these artists. Your favourite singer, fashion designer, painter, rapper, actor — the large majority of them have manufactured their art to speak to their audience. And we soak it up like a diaper.

But there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m obsessed with YouTube and studying artists through their interviews. Most of them acknowledge this struggle and realize that it’s this familiarity, the expectation of knowing exactly what kind of art they will produce that makes them popular.

What many of them do is turn to their side projects to express other parts of their creativity. Singers turn to fashion, actors start blog sites, writers…well, we find different outlets to write — screen writing, play writing, movies, film. They may not turn out to be our big money makers (sometimes they do), but it gives us an artistic discipline in which we can challenge ourselves and really push our creativity.

Will I always be fighting with myself? Probably. I’ve sort of made peace with that. But my goal remains the same — touch as many souls as possible, and if that takes a bit of manufacturing, then the so be it!

C.R.Y

Art Is Manufactured — Get Over It was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.