August 30, 2004

american letters

3 Comments

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More thoughts on “How To Be Crea­tive”:

23. Worr­ying about “Com­mer­cial vs. Artis­tic” is a com­plete waste of time.

You can argue about “the sha­me­ful state of Ame­ri­can Let­ters” till the cows come home. They were kvetching about it in 1950, they’ll be kvetching about it in 2050.

It’s a path well-trodden, and not a place where one is going to come up with many new, earth-shattering insights.
But a lot of peo­ple like to dwell on it because it keeps them from having to ever jour­ney into unk­nown terri­tory. It’s safe. It allows you to have strong emo­tions and opi­nions without witout any real risk to your­self. Without you having to do any of the actual hard work invol­ved in the making and selling of something you believe in.
To me, it’s not about whether Tom Clancy sells truc­kloads of books or a Nobel Prize Win­ner sells didly-squat. Those are just ciphers, a dis­trac­tion. To me, it’s about what YOU are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth. Dif­fe­rent cri­te­ria alto­gether.
Frankly, how a per­son nur­tu­res and deve­leps his or her own “crea­tive sove­reignty”, with or without the help of the world at large, is in my opi­nion a much more inte­res­ting sub­ject.
(NB: Thanks to the com­ments for pro­vi­ding the ins­pi­ra­tion for this thread. Heh.)

3 Responses to “american letters”

  1. miss anthrope says:
    September 2, 2004 at 10:05 pm

    so if i’m not a wri­ter, artist, musi­cian, wea­ver, actor, or crea­tor of some sort, how do i con­tri­bute? ive often won­de­red that. though its not an easy path for anyone to create their sove­reignty, as you put it, its even har­der for someone like me, who is not any of the above things. not con­tri­bu­ting to any sort of dis­truc­tion is a start, but is crea­tion really the ulti­mate, given our short time on this earth?

  2. hugh macleod says:
    September 2, 2004 at 10:16 pm

    Well, Miss A., only you can ans­wer that, don’tcha think? ;-)
    Funny, there seems to be a set of folk that think there’s some kind of difi­ni­tive rule­book out there about this stuff. There isn’t.

  3. Jim Ewing says:
    October 21, 2004 at 11:07 pm

    I was raving on to a dear friend about what I was really here for and what I con­tri­bu­ted and why I was on the earth and who cared any­way, blah blah. She wai­ted and sug­ges­ted, that for all my crea­tive endea­vors and hard work and coaching peo­ple, more blah blah, that just maybe all of that was neces­sary pre­pa­ra­tion for being the best dad pos­si­ble for my daugh­ter. Tears still come to my eyes over that one. Think I sort of stop­ped worr­ying about it after that.