Artistic Growth

Would it be unkind or even inaccurate to say I have experienced no artistic growth in the last decade? I dunno, probably. Yet that is what I am sitting with this morning, a feeling that isn’t unfamiliar but not something I worry about a lot.

Some of it is brought on by an anniversary effect. This November, 2022, will mark nine years since drafting my first (and to date only) published novel, Everything Fails. Thinking on this got me wondering if I could make an anniversary edition next year and the sort of things I might include. Then I thought, but what about the rest?

So there are eight other complete novels that need substantial proofing (and a couple need some revision, so if you wanna quibble over complete, well, there you go) that follow EF in that same setting—what I’ve long been referring to as the 32C and lately the Secretsverse. Beyond that, I have—let’s count—six other Secrets novels in disrepair, meaning they need completion or extensive revision. Also, I have an unrelated collection of short stories ready to go, two compendiums of dreams, two collections of Azza-Jono stories, Gaucho’s first chapbook, and something like, I dunno … five, let’s say, other books that are in need of work. So if we tally all that up, it’s twenty-five works. That’s not bad for nine years time. And it doesn’t count all the serials, the (literally) twelve thousand social media posts, or this newsletter (which to date consists of forty-one regular issues and dozens of sub-publications). Nor does it take into account any game work or development, nor professional work and writing. So, yes. That’s a lot of work and a good number of works. But is it growth?

You could say by production definition, yeah, that’s growth—a shitload of growth. Like, I dunno, 5000% or more. From a publication perspective, it’s ‘modest’ growth, relying mostly on this newsletter and free reading websites. And from a sales standpoint it is … well, depressing. Let’s move on from that, shall we?

It’s not that I don’t care about those things. I do, or I wouldn’t have mentioned them, nor would I feel down about sales. But what’s more important—most crucial, we could say—is artistic growth and development. To me, anyway. You do you.

Now, there’s a few different ways this topic has been discussed around these parts lately, so let me clarify the broad school of thought to which I belong.

I’m coming from the same sort of perspective as David Lynch and Robert Henri (who I learned of through reading David Lynch). Kurt Vonnegut talks about it some. I think even Elizabeth Gilbert would qualify. And that’s the idea that writing (and art in general) is something you do for the sake of doing it (philosophically because it has intrinsic value, both the process and the product), to understand life at large and yourself, to cope with hardship, to share your inner life with others you know and folks you’ll never meet, to live on after you’re dead with the hope it can enrich the lives of others from beyond the grave. It is—or rather can be—a noble pursuit, a noble work. But it needn’t be. And it needn’t help anyone else; to write is enough.

I should also add that I have no wish to perpetuate bullshit in the world, least of all, perhaps, writerly bullshit. And I have very little patience for shitty classist, racist, and misogynistic tropes, and little time for pro-capitalist greed and delusions of fairness in a tightly rigged system.

Humans are weird. That’s all-inclusive, really, but here I mean that we feel happiest when we have the sense that we’re growing, being challenged, and learning. But we also have an instinct to conserve energy, as well as a pretty strong desire to relax and cut loose.

That’s how I’m seeing it this week. What do you think?

Xoxo,

T

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