When I talk about being a novelist and an artist, I get a similar response from a lot of people:
“I also make art, but it isn’t that good.”
We live in a society that values – even fetishizes – success, inevitably defined as money, fame, and influence. And we’re told that the only way to achieve success is to have something to sell. We’re told we can’t just have hobbies; we can only have side hustles. We can’t just draw a picture, be pleased with ourselves for drawing a picture, and then put the picture in a drawer where we’ll never look at it. The picture is only valid if it’s good enough to sell to someone else. We are told we must monetize our creations for them to be valid. What was once recreation and reconnection becomes “productivity.”
This flies in the face of the entire history of human art. Ever since we climbed down from the trees, we have been singing little songs where no one else can hear, dancing little dances that no one else can see, smearing paint on the walls of caves where no one else will ever go, and making up little stories we’ll never tell anyone.
Making art is part of what makes us human; it’s in our soul and in our blood. The humans who painted cave paintings millennia ago didn’t have to do that. They weren’t getting paid to do it. And given how precarious life was then, it may have been a better use of hard-won energy for them not to. But it was in their nature to create. Art is a source of joy and a source of connection: with ourselves, with other humans, with the natural world, with our own inner landscapes, and with God or the universe or whatever you choose to call it.
But, when we are bombarded with this messaging, that our art only matters if it is good enough to sell, so many people … just don’t make art.
The problem is growing worse now that we have generative AI. It’s packaged and marketed as time-saving and labor-saving, a shortcut to “success”, as if time and effort devoted to art, writing, and creation of all kinds is time and effort wasted. The salespeople peddling this lie want us to believe that we don’t have the skill, that we need a machine to do for us what is arguably the only thing that separates us from animals and machines.
You don’t owe the world your work.
You don’t owe the world your productivity.
You don’t even owe it to yourself.
You have permission to just make art and not care whether it’s good or if anyone else will ever see it or if you can make money from it or even if its “finished”.
Chronicler's Note: 