Flutiebear: Rambling My Way Through Thedas

minorearth:

Rambling today, because I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing all week.

There’s always some kind of discussion/vague argument going around about writing/creating for yourself versus creating for an audience. There are those who say “you should always create for yourself! If you’re not, you’re doing it totally wrong!” And there are those who say “When you’re an artist, of course you’re creating for an audience, it’s a human urge to want acknowledgement for the things you create!” As with pretty much every argument everywhere, my feelings about this have come to lie somewhere in the middle of these two. (It’s the eternal curse of being a Libra: always occupying the middle ground, never getting the pleasure of feeling righteous about one side or another. Heh.)

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It’s foolish to claim something like, “you should write for yourself only!” because, well, writing is communication. You can’t communicate with yourself; the act takes more than one person: a speaker and a recipient. Anyone who says otherwise is advocating masturbation—which, hey, I like as much as the next girl, but I’m not about to go rub one off and call it a masterpiece.

I get frustrated sometimes about this write-for-yourself vs. write-for-others “debate”, because either way you answer, it accepts this underlying assumption that competitiveness is the natural state of creation; that is, we all write, draw, paint, sing, etc. because we’re in this race to be The Best, The Most Loved in Fandom, The Most Reblogged, etc and that the only way to stay sane is to deny that underlying competitive edge.

But we’re not. Who cares if that writer gets more hits than you? I mean, this isn’t the Hunger Games; you’re not going to be torn to bits if you fall a “like” or two behind. If there’s competition here, surely it is only self-imposed.

The truth of any creative pursuit is: There will always be many, many people more talented than you, and there will always be many, many people less talented than you. Some of those less talented people will get accolades, some of the more talented people will go completely ignored. Either way, it’s not a reflection on your abilities. The only way to be fair to yourself is to just create, and stop comparing yourself by how much attention you can bring to your handiwork. You’re not a gladiator. (Besides, remember what happened to those guys when they stopped being the most popular one in the ring? “Sorry, bucko, it’s thumbs down for you.”)

This isn’t the same as “write for yourself” or “write for other people”. It’s more like,  “write for your audience, and they will listen”. Because whether that audience is 3,000 Fenders shippers or just 3 Carrillers, they’re the ones who want to hear what you have to say anyway. To everyone else, your story’s just noise—and that’s okay. Yes, we all love to be loved, but attention is not appreciation, and it’s best not to confuse the two—because, of course, even the Seekers paid attention to Varric’s stories, and look where that got him. :)