[Writing] First and Final Words (01-23-'12)

[WhiteFox]

Foreword:
   I don't really know why I'm writing this. It's something I think goes without saying, and it's not like it hasn't been said many times before by many others, but at the same time I think it's worth saying.
   I've spoken a lot about how I like to work, about what my tools are and why I prefer them, and about what my priorities are as an artist. I've never said what I think about how other people work. That's a very different thing.
   I don't know how to categorize this as a piece of writing, though. It's not really a guide or tutorial, but it's not a work of fiction. It's a work of self expression, though, so I'm putting it in the ToA rather than the Long Library.
   If there is one thing I believe in first and foremost, one final word I wish I could put on every critique or comment I've ever written, this is it.



   Hi there.
   I don't know you very well, but if you're an artist... whatever being an artist means to you, drawing, writing, music, etc... you and I have one thing in common: you love to do what you do.
   There really isn't any other reason for it: someone who makes art will quickly come to realize that there is no fame, no money, and no easy road. The only thing that will keep someone on the path is a passion: not a desire to reach a destination, but satisfaction and pleasure in the act of moving forward.
   You probably don't think your work is very good, or at least not as good as it could be. That's okay. It doesn't make you emo, or tortured, or pathetic. It means you're confident, because you think, you believe, that you are, could, or should be better than your work suggests you are.
   You. Are not. Your art.
   A drawing, a piece of writing, a recording, is a thing. It is an object that you made, and it comes from you, it is not you yourself. You can hate the work you make, and still enjoy making it. Don't look for satisfaction in what you produce, look for it in the act of creating it.
   The work doesn't have be perfect. The very concept of perfection is utter absurdity, a hypothetical ideal that by very definition cannot be accomplished in reality, a chimera in the desert. That way lies madness.
   All you really have to do is beat Sturgeons Revelation: "90% of everything is crap." It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good. This cannot be done by getting rid of every fault, because work without faults do not necessarily have merits. The elimination of weakness does not create strength. The strengths are what really matter, and they're different for everybody.
   There is something about art that you love, something that made you want to be an artist in the first place. Follow it, because that is where your strengths are. Throw yourself into it. Take it to the nines, shoot for the stars, break the mold. You don't have to be good at everything, you just have to build the strengths needed to accomplish what you want to do, and overcome the faults that get in the way of it.
   When you can put what you love into what you make... when it shows through in your pictures, your words, your music... others will see it, and they will love it too.
   If you and I have anything in common, it's this: there is something about your work, something you do or are trying to do, that is good. Something worth being passionate about, something that makes it worth doing, something that keeps you going.
   For that, even though I don't know you very well, even though you may not like your own art, I think there is something about your work that is good.
   I want to see it too.

[Sofox]

I meant to write earlier:

I really like what you've written there. It's got some good thoughts in there like Sturgeons and not being defined by what you create. Great focus on what to achieve when writing. For me, it was great to get Dreamvaders finished and out there.