The Thursday! Newsletter 1-40: We Don't Control the World
Volume 1, Issue 40
I've been thinking a lot the past couple weeks about success and frustration.
More precisely, I've been wondering why I've not had more success with my creative endeavors, which has caused me quite a lot of frustration. I wrote good stories and poems. When folks see them, folks like them more often than not. Not everything I do is for everyone, but everything I do is for more than, say, 20 people at a time.
And yet, only one story I've posted on my website (which I moved to Wordpress in 2018) has been read more than 100 times. One out of roughly 175 stories. Less than 10 of my stories have gained more than 50 viewers. In other words, I've put a lot of creative work into the world and the world barely notices.
That's a toughie right there. That's the kind of discovery that makes you wonder what the whole point of writing and sharing cool stuff is in the first place. Why take the time and the care to share something from your heart If barely anyone reads or sees or touches it? As I said to a friend earlier this week, you can deal with hate -- push back against it. You can "weaponize" hate for your work. You can always say "These people hate what I do, but they're not the kind of people you are, right?" We see that all the time, especially in politics, but also in entertainment. But how do you push back against indifference? How do you build excitement and interest in a thing that has, to this point, generated no excitement and interest?
The easiest answer is "just keep doing it and the world will catch up with you". That's a fine and optimistic answer, but it's also an answer that, if wrong, will blow up in your face stupendously. What do you do if the world never catches up with you? What if you've done our best to create wonderful and interesting things and people still just don't care?
The truth is, the world will not necessarily catch up with you. You may work yourself silly and still fail. You may write hundreds of stories and poems, turn them loose, talk about them on your social media feeds and to your friends, advertise them in chatrooms and Discord servers, share them in podcasts, and still only get a few actual fans. You may actually sit up nights wondering what in the world you can do to break through, how many more stories it will take before more than a handful of people see what you're doing. You may cry in frustration and swear to give it all up only to grab your notepad the next night and start a brand-new story. How do you go on? What's the real answer?
I'm here to tell you there is no real answer. You are either a writer (or artist or illustrator or singer or songwriter or sculptor or poet) or you are not. If you are, then you will do the thing you should do. You will write. You will draw. You will paint. You will sing. Or you will not. The world might notice you. Some time. Some how. Or it might not. Ever. History is full of people who wrote beautiful poems and whose names you have never heard because the world passed them over for whatever reason, or for no particular reason at all. You could be one of those people.
Truth is, you don't control the world. Not, at least, until you've finished work on that orbital mind-control beam. Before that? The world does what it does without your permission or consideration. But you know that. So do I. It is a cause of frustration but it is also a thing we know and can not change. Figure it into your plans. Know it all the way into your heart. But keep doing your stuff. Remember that from an early newsletter? Do your stuff. Let the world sort out the world. You don't have time for that. You have stuff to do -- stories and poems and pictures and paintings and sculptures and carvings and songs and symphonies and podcasts and dramas and comedies and all sorts of things we don't even know yet but they're yours and you need to get them done.
I get the frustration. You bet I do. I feel it like hot weight in my gut more than once or twice a week. Some of you have even heard (or read) these very same frustrations from me before. It's not new -- not to you nor to me. We're all in the same boat, we creative people. All I can tell you is to keep it up. Send what you make into the world. Send a few reminders to publishers or galleries or whatever. Knock on a bunch of doors then let it be and go on to the next thing. Rinse and repeat. Laugh and create again. You may yet get what you want. Or not.
Either way, you are a creator and that's pretty darned cool. Keep it up. I see you.
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What I Read and Wrote this Week
I won't claim "The Call Did Not Come from Inside this Dimension" is a deep and sophisticated story, but it is fun and that's enough for me!
"Death and Old MacReady" is a poem best read aloud. Give it a try!
Over the weekend, I had occasion to remember a story I wrote back in 2015 called "The Vigilant Sisters". I think it still holds up. What do you think?
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One More Thing
This is where I ask you to help me out. I don't like asking for help but there's no way I can share Thursday! far and wide without wonderful people like you who dig what I do and are willing to tell other people about it. Please, feel free to share this or any past newsletter with anyone you think will love it like you do. You can also buy or share my cool book, give it a solid review, or get an autographed copy (ask and I'll tell you how!).
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