Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Stress + Exhaustion = Creative Disease

I was struck by Joss Whedon's recent interviews around the Age of Ultron, with him saying:
"This was the hardest work I've ever done,” he readily admitted, “and at some point, when it's that hard, you just feel like you've lost."
It's a great quote, and a great article, please go check it out. He talks about the process of creating something, and how the demands of the creative marketplace drained him to the point of exhaustion.

I am reminded of the thousands and thousands of writers making a living, or trying to, off of the current e-reader market. Some writers throw out book after book, hoping for traction and banking on volume to make a livable wage. Others strike gold, and many, many toll away in obscurity, never to see the recognition they deserve. It is a fickle market, and success is never predictable or guaranteed.

Every time I see an ad saying, "Get rich off of e-books!" I am reminded of the gold rush days, and how most prospectors found nothing but backbreaking work, wasted years, and lost dreams. I don't want to dissuade anyone, but making a living as a successful writer takes a lot of work. A lot of work. You may end up craving the certainty and security of a normal job after a while.

Mr. Whedon gives me the impression that creating art, in his case movies, for a large corporate entity drains him because of all the demands the large entertainment bureaucracy puts on him and the process. For many independent writers, we have to write books, edit them, market them, respond to fans, and keep the show rolling. For those who try to make this their sole income, they have to keep releasing books in order to keep the money coming in, since the most income is typically generated by new titles, and new titles selling older works. Given 'everybody else is doing it' as well, and you have created a situation where more and more people are jumping in, and more and more work is needed to keep up and get noticed.

I believe the big problem today isn't writing books, it is discovering them.

Given all that, it is a lot of stress and work for the indie writer. Add normal life's stress and work on top of that, and you could find yourself feeling like you are in Mr. Whedon's shoes. I sympathize with him, and I wish him a long and well-deserved vacation. As creative people, we need to take breaks, and then we come back with better stuff than before.

I have also edited work I have done when stressed out and exhausted, and I can see the lack of attention to detail and confusion in my own work. For big productions like movies, there is a large team there that catches this stuff, so the system has a built-in immune system for mistakes and burn-out by anyone on the team. For smaller producers and single operators like indie writers, there is no safety net.

The best thing we can do to deal with work produced when we are burnt out is put it aside for a while and come back to it later when we have a clear head. I have done this, and it is a technique I use today to get perspective on my work. Some writers can do this with multiple projects, and come back to one out of several to keep things fresh and in perspective.

Then again, a big team can't put things on hold since you got hundreds of people on the clock and waiting. So we have that advantage of being able to put things aside. For some writers, they can't, paying the rent means they can't put a project aside. Combined with a lack of redundancy and burn-out protection, this is a dangerous thing. So now, your bills and keeping the lights on are the pressure of 'on the clock and waiting' for you.

I don't have an answer for any of this, if I did, I would be running things and not writing about them. We need to understand that the market for creative goods is a ravenous beast, it will take as much as you can give, and then much more. The market can become your master and ruin your life. It can sit there and flat-out ignore you despite you screaming at the top of your lungs. It can look like a beach packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people looking to get noticed, and still let the lines waiting in to play.

To survive, you need to be the master of this chaotic and random force. You cannot let it be the master of you. If you have a plan to do something, write it down and execute despite everything else. Like walking on that crowded beach, you could let the crowds push you and steer you in random directions for hours, when all you wanted to do is walk over and get some ice cream on the boardwalk.

To get that ice cream, you need to work your way through the crowd, ignore the ways they want to push you in, find places where you can walk easier, and work towards your goal step by step. You will get there, and it will take work. You may not get what you want when you are there either, they could have run out of ice cream. Then you need to be flexible, and make a plan to get popsicles at another stand nearby. To be successful, you need to learn how to deal with the crowd, and if needed, ignore it and move towards your goal. You need to be able to set new goals based on changing conditions. You also need to be able to measure your energy and health, and make sure you can realistically get to where you are going.

Managing the forces which inflict stress and exhaustion not only help you with your own health, they help you avoid the 'creative disease' that takes you from the top of your game. These forces are the same which get in the way of reaching our goals. We need to know when to stop and rest. We need to know when to push forward. We need to learn to not be afraid of the crowd, and move through it to get to where we want to be. We cannot let it rule our lives. We must understand it, and be the master of it.

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