Flutiebear: Rambling My Way Through Thedas

serindrana:

flutiebear:

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. :)

That we’re not in that race is so, so crucial to remember.

I don’t think that people should feel bad for falling into that looking-at-hits mindset. It will be painful, at least to some, if you see a piece written maybe in the same fandom, maybe in a different one, that has not hundreds or thousands but hundreds of thousands of hits, maybe in as little as a month. I think it’s human to wonder if maybe you’re doing something wrong, because that sort of response is possible and it’s nowhere near what you’re experiencing.

It’s human to wonder, sure, in that I suppose all emotional responses are human. But what’s the point of it? I mean, I don’t go for out for a jog and then beat myself up because I can’t run my mile in 4 minutes like the world-class marathoners do. If I ask myself, “well, why can’t I run a mile in 4 minutes?” I could make a long list of reasons that would include everything from “you don’t train 8 hours a day” to “your lungs can’t process oxygen that efficiently” to “you’re an overweight old woman well past her athletic prime”.

That’s not to say I should just give up and accept my mediocrity. But rather, I should recognize that comparing myself to the outliers ignores that there’s this whole rest of the bell curve that I could be moving along. Success shouldn’t be measured by extremes, because for 99.99% of people, that kind of success just isn’t repeatable.

I just don’t ever want to tell myself or somebody else who’s there that they’re wrong. Because that tends to make the feeling worse, you know? When you feel miserable, and then somebody says, well, you feel miserable because you’re functioning wrong and now you should change.

For me it’s more of a, comparing yourself like that can be dangerous - and there are other ways to think about it. Which I think is what you’re trying to say, and I’m just flailing around now. XD

Well, I am definitely saying that the attitude that Fandom is Competition — that we’re all participating in one big gladiator ring where only the winner survives — that is wrong. Not just an alternative way of thinking about it. It’s incorrect, because we’re not. You can’t win fandom. You just can’t. That’s like trying to win purple, or square. Just won’t happen, no matter how hard you try.

Competitiveness in fandom isn’t just self-defeating. I mean, what does it say about how that hyper-competitive person perceives the rest of the fandom? How can he ever truly appreciate what someone else creates, if he’s always treating his own work as a contest entry? Is he always “rating” other fanworks, fanart in his head?

I’m certainly not trying to make you or anyone else feel bad, but—and I mean this as kindly as possible—if comparing yourself to others makes you miserable, then stop doing it. Step away from the keyboard, click unfollow, whatever you need to do. Because in that scenario, you’re the one making yourself miserable, not the people you compare yourself to. Do whatever you can to be fair to yourself, because in the end that’s the only voice that really matters.