This week my husband and I spent three days at a creative conference.
Mostly it was designers and illustrators, no writers at all, but still it was amazing to be in a place with so many other creative people and admire their work from the sidelines.
And then.
On the last day, a friend of mine spoke about building a platform from a business perspective. It was helpful even for me, even though I come from a completely different creative pursuit, and I knew it would be especially helpful to all the other hand-lettering artists who are trying to do what he has already successfully done: get their art recognized and appreciated.
Right after his talk, someone tweeted something disrespectful and rude and, frankly, immature.
Someone who was there.
Someone who was one of us.
And, see, I just felt so angry. I felt angry for my friend and for hand-lettering artists and for all of us.
And then I felt sad.
I felt sad that we can feel so threatened by someone else’s success that we think it says something about us. That we feel the need to discount another artist. That we let hate slide in to our hearts.
I felt sad that we don’t know how to share our space well.
I felt sad that we seem to have so much trouble finding a way to cheer one another on in our similar pursuits.
I am no exception. I have never ridiculed publicly, but I have felt threatened and ruffled and discounted and territorial and afraid. I have spoken harshly of others to my husband, possibly even in the presence of my children. I have raged about how it’s not fair that they got that while I still get this. I have felt like I deserved something more than another did. I have thought (erroneously) that there isn’t enough space for us all.
This needs to change.
Our inability to share the writing spaces in the world and support other writers and help talented people do what they do really just boils down to fear.
We are afraid that if another writer is successful with her writing, there will not be room for us. We are afraid that if this novelist “makes it” with a story that sounds a little bit like ours, there will no longer be an audience to stand behind us. We are afraid that someone else will take our rightful place and do it better.
Saturation of the writing market is a lie.
[Tweet “Saturation of the writing market is a lie. There is enough room for all of us.”]
Saturation of the market says we live under the laws of scarcity.
It says:
1. There is not enough to go around, so we must be the best.
2. If someone else is more “successful” in their writing than we are, we obviously aren’t the best.
3. We must protect ourselves by proving those others artists are not the best.
Best and better and all those other comparison words have no place in the writing world, unless we’re talking of our own progression–as in, I’m better than I used to be. I reached my personal best in word counts this week.
When we are comparing our work to another’s, when we are bemoaning what someone got that we didn’t, when we tear down another writer just because we’re afraid of their presence in the marketplace, we are an island of alone, and writers cannot survive and keep creating on an island of alone.
Because, at the heart of it all, we are people. People need relationships. People need community.
Comparison kills relationships. Affirmation restores them.
[Tweet “Writers are a community, but comparison kills relationships. Affirmation restores them.”]
So there are some things I want us to remember.
1. There is enough room for all of us.
2. The way our art expresses itself through us is not the same way art expresses itself through that other person (unless we’re intentionally trying to copy them).
3. We belong to each other.
The last one is the most important.
[Tweet “We are a writing community. We belong to each other. Let’s speak well to and about each other.”]
We are a writing community. Creating beauty for a world that may or may not appreciate it is an incredibly lonely pursuit, and we need to be cheering each other along the way. We need to admire each other and we need to be admired, but we will do neither if we’re only interested in discounting those by whom we feel threatened.
We need to be giving to each other, not taking away.
Giving instruction. Giving away our secrets. Giving away the strategies that have worked for us. Giving support. Giving encouragement. Giving lessons we’ve learned so others don’t waste their time making the same mistake that cost us a year.
It feels scary to give when this is our livelihood, but relationships are ALWAYS better than existing alone.
So let’s take care with other writer hearts. Let’s respect one another for who we are. Let’s be each other’s champions at every turn of the journey.
Let’s turn our lonely art into community art.
Week’s prompt
Candy
