All art is conceptual. The rest is craft. And it’s easy!
Although the typical starving artist may loathe the investor class and their financial privileges, we have something to learn from them. An investor knows, because of the intentional inflation rate set by the central bank, just socking away their money for a rainy day represents an opportunity loss in all but the worst economies. Rather, they must pick the best places they can to invest it, and until they feel there’s a genuinely superior alternative, leave it there until it bears dividends.
So too it is with the conceptions of an artist. The muse can be relied upon to sing within us periodically—where she comes from and why remains a mystery, but come she will. Whether it’s the premise for a screenplay or a song, an aesthetic for a dress or a painting, a serendipitous discovery on a photography walk, or the unbalmed “pain” for an entrepreneur to ease with an invention—concepts periodically present themselves to all of us, official “artists” and non alike.
What follows in the moments after inspiration strikes is critical: the artist may, we hope, be enchanted with their discovery and swept away into a creative reverie that races like wildfire. The voice recorder on your smartphone can be help here, capturing every murmur of inspiration for later scrutiny. But capture it you must, because the next inevitable stage is self-doubt, and you will need it preserved durably enough to endure the onslaught.
Every piece of art, however historic, can be laughed off with equal force.
After the reverie subsides, you will gaze into your baby’s eyes and see how unfortunately she resembles her father. As you descend into postpartum the questions “What was I thinking?” and “Aren’t I just worthless?” will appear scrawled in virtual lipstick on your bathroom mirror. “What a ridiculous idea…I mean, how stupid could I be?”
But all ideas are stupid…every piece of art, however historic, can be laughed off with equal force. We choose to believe in some rather than others, is all, and this is where the investor mentality comes in. If you give in and just laugh off all your concepts, you are as “safe” as an investor hiding their money between their mattresses. As “safe” as a condemned person lying in a cell on death row. Because there your life is, running out of the hourglass, minute of unrealized productivity after minute.
To break out of that cell and go somewhere—anywhere is better than the unmarked grave—you can set a realistic output goal for yourself. A screenwriter may hope to write one or two screenplays per year. A songwriter six to twelve songs. A painter perhaps twelve to twenty-four paintings. A photographer might take five hundred frames in a week and finish and publish half a dozen of them. An entrepreneur maybe a new startup or solution every two to four years. A chef must at least make dinner tonight.
A practically achievable completion rate with a minimal cycle time serves as your primary constraint. And constraints as we know are good for creativity. Your self-management should center only here: “Am I meeting my output goals?” To meet those goals, you will need to select the best concept you have available at the given moment and carry it to completion. It may or may not be the concept that will be celebrated throughout the remainder of human history. But it’s what you’ve got, so you go with it.
Preferring to work for hire isn’t about money or management, it’s about belief.
Externally imposed deadlines are a great help to creative people, even more-so if the concept is externally imposed as well. And if that’s how you put the bread on your table, there’s little shame in it. But giving up on your ability to self-manage can reduce you from an artist to a craftsperson. You do indeed have the ability to self-manage just fine: what you are ceding to the client commissioning your work isn’t their conceptual brilliance or managerial acumen, but merely their insistent belief that their concept is worth completing, where you have little in your own.
If you’re willing to relent on yourself and agree that you can finish a reasonable number of works in a year and have enough concepts (of whatever brilliance) to at least begin, the next road block you will throw before yourself is preparatory arrest. Do I have the tools I need? Are my tools any good? Do I have to meet unimaginably awesome and committed team members before I can do anything? Do I need angels and venture capitalists to throw huge wads of cash at the problem?
Most likely these questions are proxies for your real self-doubt, “Could I and this concept possibly be worth allying with and investing in?” When you need other people involved, there’s one simple way out of that dilemma: go ahead and present an honest account of yourself and the concept, and let them decide that question for themselves. They too, have a number of opportunities before them, and if you like them, you are to give them the choice of which is best to invest in, and feel no guilt in doing so.
Craft is easy. Ridiculously easy.
The rest is just craft. You can call it “work” but that’s not romantic and proud enough. Let’s call it craft. And craft is easy. Ridiculously easy. You can only do as well as you know how, and you will learn better how through iteration. You just pull yourself into your socks and show up in the morning, and get’er done by hook or by crook. When you’ve run out of improvements to be made on the work, go ahead and compare it to similar that have succeeded. Keep up with those Joneses, learning their craftiness. And when you can’t think of any way you could be doing better, go ahead and ship it. It’s done. You did something.
The hindsight that rushes in after the closure of publication is yet another emotional maelstrom. You have to get used to being ignored. And better than being ignored, you will learn, is being criticized. But after your cravings for public acceptance subside, you again are faced with your own worst critic. And if it was anything less than stupefying success—for which you will feel profound guilt at how easy it ended up being to win—you will have the urge to condemn your concept, your process, your tools and your team.
Fair enough. A healthy discontent is the prelude to progress, Gandhi intoned. You’ll show ‘em this time.
Muse, I need you…and I’ll take you as-is.
