Creating Something

Find out what really interests you and what you have a talent for by experimenting with different creative activities. If possible, get some training in that area. But most importantly, practice and practice and develop your skill. Then find ways to support yourself while you dedicate more and more time to it. If you can sell what you are creating, market it as best you can or find someone else to market it for you. Otherwise, make it your hobby and avocation.

It is said that true artists are compelled. They have to keep going, to keep creating. It would seem that the desire must be strong because the market will only support so many artists. A vast majority of artists will need to support their own art habit, with little encouragement. At times it will seem like an absurdity flung into the void. But in spite of everything they will feel the need to keep creating, to keep producing meaning, form, and pattern.

Maybe they will be recognized when they are old or when they are dead. They don’t know. To some this is a constant ache. Others learn to leave it to the future and they are happy if they can just be given the time for their art.

As with athletes, artists get arranged into tiers and hierarchies. There are those who are honored and recognized, may even become rich. Then there are those who are at least selected to be presented to the public, in galleries or in print. Then there are the larger number of artists who receive little or no recognition and yet still keep going.

To be an artist (painter, sculptor, composer, novelist, poet, or one of many other types) you need to pick your discipline or disciplines. Where is your talent and what do you love? And why are you doing it? You may never be recognized as an artist. People may mock you and think you are silly and presumptuous. What drives you? Why do you want to create? Who is your audience?

Let’s take the example of poetry. Many poems are short. Many people can sit down and write a poem in their spare time. They may start writing poetry to work through some personal issues or as a way to get some attention from teachers or as a romantic tool. They may just want to share special feelings they have for someone they love on a special occasion. They may just want to have a song to share. They are occasional poets and their audience is their family and friends and lovers or maybe just themselves.

Beyond this there are poets who want to go public. But who is the public for poetry? The biggest public is that for popular music. The lyrics to songs are poems and poetry started as song. But that is almost an entirely different discipline of songwriting or rap. Some poetry gets close to this in the form of performance poetry and poetry slams. Here the poetry is almost like a script for a performance. And the performance is the central issue, not the written text, although even here the “script” can live on as a written text.

Narrowing the focus, then, who is the public for poetry as a written text? It is part of the reading public, but the most popular forms there are novels and nonfiction. Poetry has a rather small percentage of that audience. There is still a diehard group of poetry readers out there, but many of them like to read the romantic or modern poets. The audience for new poetry is even smaller. There is then a small group of diehard fans for new poetry, but increasingly the audience is largely made up of other poets and poetry editors, critics, and teachers. Some poets may get a larger audience because of something else they have written or because of the subculture they represent or because they are writing for children, but the poetry audience still remains fairly small. Similar considerations apply to other arts, but in different ways. For example, painters who are not just filling orders for interior decorators will also tend to have a small audience of collectors and museum goers. And composers of music that is not intended for a popular audience will find that their music is, well, not that popular, except for a small group of concert goers.

But back to poetry, despite the small audience, there is still a thriving poetry scene. Part of it is tied to venues for readings and a larger part is tied to universities and to poetry workshops or small ad hoc reading groups. Beyond this it is like a religion with few members, many isolated believers tied together by small magazines and an occasional conference.

Poetry is largely a solitary activity. The amount of time that must go into perfecting your craft, the number of drafts thrown away, the stolen moments when you are not left drained by your day job, the discouragement and feelings of futility and of wasting your time all seem to work against you. But if you stick to it and keep writing and keep writing, you may create a few poems of enduring beauty and you may end up with a body of work that you are at least satisfied with. The end result of all of this work and struggle will likely be, if you are very lucky, a few inclusions in standard anthologies and a collected poems collection of a few hundred pages. And that is if you did not become so discouraged that they went decades at a time producing nothing.

Similar struggles and discouragement go with many art forms. But if, despite all this, you are still driven to create, you may just be an artist. Find a way to support yourself and your family. Find a way to dedicate time to your art. Find ways to learn from others, read, go to shows, talk, find mentors. But most of all, keep at it year after year, keep improving, keep your best work, throw away drafts or experiments that did not work out. Don’t be afraid to start again in a new direction. You may eventually get where you want to go. At least, try to enjoy the journey.