On Craft…
Let’s not pretend here: Attention feels good. We like the rush of getting the clicks and the eyeballs on our work. It can keep us going through the throes of a slump. However, the attention economy should never be your driving force. You should be inspired by your own art, by your own ability, not by the potential reactions to what you make. Your goal should never be the most impressions on socials—your goal should be to make art that feels alive years after it was released.
Impact is everything. To this day, I get emails about #YearOfMac and what it means to people. This tells me the writing is alive. It still touches people, and consequently, I am touched by their outreach. This exchange between myself, my art, and my reader is my ultimate fuel. You want to create work with the intention of impacting someone far beyond the initial tweet about your work. You want your work to be stumbled upon and appreciated outside of the context of the news cycle. Living art has legs far beyond the timeliness of the original pitch.
If you’re a close follower of these newsletters, you know I read a lot of photo books. Some more challenging than others. I can flip through old photo books and realize what does and does not mean something to me, but my reaction and desire to engage with the work implies it is a living thing. You want the same for your writing. You want people to react and have thoughts, perhaps even drop your piece in the groupchat and have discourse. You want there to be some kind of transference of energies. If someone reads your piece then clicks out and says nothing, the work is missing a lifeforce.
Now, not everything you write will be alive. If you’re in the realm of branded content or just pushing through your deadlines, it’s pretty self-evident those pieces won’t be breaths of fresh air. But they don’t have to be! You will know immediately which of your pieces deserves the extra work to feel like this larger thing for the reader. Hint: It’s the ones that mean the most to you. My Lil Peep Hellboy piece was my most “alive” piece of 2020, and people still mention it to me. It was the most important project I undertook that year. These relationships are not accidents. When your heart is in something, it comes alive naturally.
When you find the time to work on your own projects, and you aren’t on the clock, it’s imperative you think about the lifeforce of your work. If you’re working on a personal project of any kind, the whole thing must be alive. You cannot afford flatness. There must be pulse and depth. But this isn’t all that dire of a situation, because if this is your personal project, you’re already invested. The life will come through. So, this dispatch is really about focusing your energy in the right ways, giving your all to the right things, and making sure your priorities are square. Impressions are fine, but living work is forever.