I would like to quote, in full, a message left by the musician and artist T-Pain in response to a query on reddit, linked to here, https://www.reddit.com/r/musicians/comments/1dcvyu4/comment/l86v3xd/
‘I’ve seen multiple people mention the life as an artist as miserable/draining, whereas it is the dream for many people. What is it really like?’
T-Pain responds:
‘It’s like getting your first car as a teen. You love driving everywhere and anywhere you want. Everyone sees you in your car and you get known for being seen all around town driving in your new piece of shit that your dad bought you from his friend. You start making it all less shitty and cool just how you like it. Then someone gets the bright idea to give you some gas money to take them somewhere they wanna go since you like driving so much. This becomes more and more frequent and the word starts to spread to other nearby towns that you drive ppl to places for gas money. That spreads until eventually (and sometimes “overnight”) you no longer get to drive places you want to go anymore. Your entire life is collecting gas money to make other ppl happy with a ride to their desired destinations. Your precious first car no longer belongs to you. It belongs to whoever is providing the gas. You think to yourself “maybe if I just drive a bunch and then stack the money I can just stop accepting new rides and I’ll be able to enjoy my car again”. But nope. In all the time of driving ppl you’ve never really made a connection with any of em, and you’ve been driving so long that the ppl you knew from before you got your car all have new lives now and have moved on and made new friends while you were out on the road “living the life” and “getting to see new places”. Even though you never actually got to see anything anywhere. You just dropped a customer off and got back on the road to the next job. Something that started out to be so enjoyable that you gladly did with your own money got taken over by the thought that”maybe if I had more money, this would be even more enjoyable, I’d get to drive anywhere I want, I’d get to take my friends with me, I’d have infinite gas for all the stuff I want to do” but again NOPE! That’s not your car anymore buddy. That is not….. your fucking car anymore.
But yea that’s just what I can come up with off the top of my head lol. Hope that helps at all’
I think this applies to all creatives, in a sense. Something about this response very neatly captures part of the difficult transition between doing something for yourself, and starting to do it for other people. I suspect professional musicians in the public eye go considerably further down that road than I have, but…
I find myself realizing that I’ve spent a lot of time away from the driving I enjoy, whether or not I’m picking my own destination or not. Due to the nature of the project I’m working on, I’m spending most of my time lately underneath my car with a wrench fixing the gearbox.
Or, to be more specific, struggling to break away from the story structure I started with. It’s been a lot of sitting down, trying to solve a story problem, and remaining fixated on the solutions I used that got me all jammed up in the first place.
Thankfully, over the past week or two, I’ve started to have what feel like ‘Eureka!’ style moments of revelation. Moments that lead to absolute euphoria.
Changes that are relatively subtle – this event being motivated by a murder here, that character being driven by a desire to regain the status they previously sought – making huge foundational shifts to what I’m doing, changing and deepening themes.
It feels great.
But it is still wrenching around under the car, not even driving it.
I think there’s more wrenching to get through before I’m done, but I’m getting hopeful.
One technique I’ve used (and will continue to use) is reading some of my various craft-books, talking about things like act structure and the purpose of foreshadowing, and making notes not about the craft book, but about the thoughts the craft book sparks about Quicker than Blood. It’s not something I’ve done before – usually when I go into ‘study’ mode it’s aimed at deepening my skills, not into trouble-shooting a specific project. It’s proven more useful than I realized.
There is a balance in these things. In driving other people where they need to go, while still visiting the places you want to see. In keeping your car running while still keeping it fed with fuel and in good repair. The trick is, finding it.
And I guess for me, like many others out there, that is the long-term quest – the constant journey to keep your eye on. Because it’s when we lose that balance that our creative (and emotional/personal lives) go awry.
I hope you find the balance you need in what you do this month, and if not, I hope this reminder to look for it helps.
As ever, thank you so much for your interest and support. I’m going to get back to wrenching around under my ride and trying to stay balanced.
