Writers, Don’t Leak Your Magic.
“Stop writing about your trip and sharing all your photos!”
I would get texts similar to this from my sister.
“Don’t give it all away!”
What she doesn’t understand is that an artist these days, in the world of social media, has been trained and feels the pressure *to* give it all away. Because this is how we survive. This is the way we think people will come to support us, how we garner “followers” or as I like to say “appreciators”. Because to be an artist means to reveal the heart, the gut, the soul of your process. What she *does* understand about me is my generosity, my desire to give and to connect and to share everything I have. These two things together, the feeling that I must give to survive, and the feeling that I love to give because, community, can cause for my own self depletion, ill health, and creative exhaustion.
As artists who are asked in this day and age to share so much of our process, I personally forget to actually complete my art. Sometimes I forget to even begin my art. Social media has become the medium. And sometimes my creativity stops there.
I understand that some people really get inspired by conversations and by sharing bits and pieces of what they are working on, and can actually time manage their work in a way where they share some and then lock themselves…
