Failing In Public
I read a post a few months ago from the artist behind The Sneaky Art Post who described using his space on Substack to be able to “fail in public.” I find all his stuff really wonderful, but what I think he was referring to was being transparent in his process: showing his creative struggles, taking his work in different directions, test driving material without it being fully realized. I was equal parts fascinated and bowled over by his bravery. I am a proud, insufferable Xennial, which is an enormously fun-sounding word. If I had a kid, I’d most certainly name it Xennial. You’ll never find your name on a novelty license plate, Xen, but you’ll also never pick up someone else’s coffee order by mistake, so win!
Xennials are defined as: People born between 1975 and 1983, exposed to an analogue adolescence but a digital adulthood. This is the generation often referred to as the last generation of children to play outdoors. This is accurate, and I still have the Pavolvian itch to head home when the street lights come on to prove it. I would add that we’re also a generation of closed door creatives. For better or worse, the tools to incessantly broadcast and share and disseminate in real time for a limitless number of people didn’t exist. Ours was maybe the tail end of a generation of people carrying models and mindsets that creation happened, essentially, in sequestration—the studio, the workshop, the dark room, the rehearsal space, the broom closet.
You refined and refined and refined until you decided THE ART THING was presentable enough to get tentatively, anxiously piloted in the direction of an editor or producer or booking agent or some other type of industry gatekeeper who you hoped would decide it was “good enough” to be in the magazine or get a record deal (what are those?) or a spot in the film festival. And sweet infant Jesus help you if your ART THING wasn’t actually ready for prime time like you thought it was. Back to the broom closet along with your newly minted humiliations and searing self-doubt. Not a punishingly neurotic and artistically toxic process at all! No wonder your parents kindly suggested becoming an optometrist instead of a stand-up comic.
This shift in creative process to letting people look in on “creation in process” is wildly interesting and scary to me. For some, I suppose it can be an excuse to generate junk without being intentional or thoughtful or building artistic muscles. That kind of stuff is subject to its own kind of Darwinian laws of art. In another century people will still be reading The Odyssey, but listening to “Call Me Maybe?” Eight-ball says: outlook not so good. I think the value of adapting a “failing in public” mindset with your work is, as I intimated, building courage, maybe even artistic fearlessness; giving yourself permission to play more, to take risks, to invent; disarming yourself of the notion that your ART THING is sacrosanct and precious instead of what it actually is: durable, flexible, expansive, up to the task of stretching and growing and maybe even taking you for a ride instead of the other way around.
This Xennial is open to those new tricks (though I am still getting my ass home when those street lights come on!). In that spirit, I’m reshaping some of what I’m doing here. I’m going to start a weekly photo journal of images and a bit of writing so that you can “walk with me” photographically. I’ll still include longer writing, but what I’ve learned since starting this space is that, for me, that kind of writing needs a bit more time to simmer on the burner than I’ve been giving it. And I’m considering incorporating audio posts. We’ll see!
I can’t thank you all enough for continuing to read, respond, and show up for my work. I am grateful from the nether regions of my Xennial soul. Truly!
“Now for something completely different,” (I don’t have Monty Python money for that sound file, you’ll have to read it in your own British accent), here’s a poem from an un-poet.
Cheers!
X-She
A Day In…an HOUR In….A Few Minutes In the Panicked Life of a Writer
After the email has been checked
And the Instagram scrolled (thrice!)
And the Facebook thoroughly trolled
And reliable news site #1 gave you the news today, oh boy!
And reliable news site #2 confirmed the doom was real, oh boy!
And reliable news site #3 served up the happy-puppy-baby hippo-heartwarming-thing you really and actually needed, oh boy!
Then it is time
To
Get
SERIOUS!
Close out the email!
Shun social media!
Silence the news-site-alerts-oh boy!
Open the blank document
Stare into the cursed cursor’s foot tap-tap-tapping like your Ma’s patience circling the drain as you farted around getting ready for school
THIS IS SERIOUS! BE SERIOUS!
YOUAREAVERYSERIOUSWRITERPERSONMAYBEPOSSIBLYTHENEXTJOANDIDIONORSOMEONEEQUALLYASGREATIMNOTKIDDING!
FOCUS!
The MUSE is waiting!
Your FOLLOWERS are waiting!
THE ENTIRE WHOLE WIDE, WIDE WORLD IS, LIKE, WAITING! #OMG!
To read the LIFE CHANGING GENRE DEFYING AWARD WINNING THING
YOU
MUST
WRITE!
No pressure.
Now. Begin. Go.
Wait, what? Just like that?
Yes! Like this: one, two, three, four, five, six sentence!
The words don’t have to be strong or right or even make sense
They just have to exist. That’s the heart of the start
And suddenly you’re very inspired to do a load of laundry, make the best perfect Spotify writing playlist in the history of writing playlists, walk the dog (again), research Canadian tax laws from the 1800s
It’s too hard to start, you mutter, it’s, like, the hardest part!
But it’s really not
Believing
Is
Love it, Sheila! As a Gen X, all this resonates and I love it. xoxo