Welcome to the mid-May newsletter, where the question is: “Are art and audience two halves of the same act?”
Here’s what I’m looking for: a book describing the perfecting marketing skillset for artists and hermits.
Let me explain:
I read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron when I was a teenager, and have been (mostly) writing three pages of stream of consciousness every day since. The Morning Pages are good training in separating the act of writing from the act of editing.
The most important thing I learned from The Artist’s Way was: create first; edit, critique, and censor later on. The book is brilliant and I’ve probably read it seven times.
Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss showed up in my life just after my second moon node. It was profoundly impactful in that mid-life moment of re-evaluating everything you know about yourself. For those standing in that portal where the inscription above reads: “Know Thyself.”
The book maps a complicated archeological project to identify and relate to the archetypes that have sway over one’s personality. I refer to this work and draw on it frequently.
Just this month I read the exuberant We Need Your Art by Amie McNee. Using the techniques of bare minimums, bare maximums, and permission slips, I moved successfully into writing everyday (i.e. beyond morning pages; writing actual novel scenes).
And, I realized why I wasn’t before – because I was missing the container into which the writing would be put. While my basic grounding in creating without editing was firm, I had a mis-perception: that I should wait to create until the container was already set up.
Finally, Story Genius by Lisa Cron. Paired with the miraculous Scrivener, this pair talked me through the toolset of writing scenes that have pull. Without them, I don’t think I would have been able to complete editing Apophenia Gold.
Finally, here is what is missing: the marketing book for artists and hermits. I’m talking about a full-fledged, life-changing program and protocol that will contain secret magical tools (akin to the morning pages, artist’s dates, or permission slips) to create the container for art and connect it to an audience.
Because, like heat and cold, light and dark, poles of a magnet – the art and its audience are two halves of the same thing. And marketing is the skillset that allows one to connect them.
But I’m not going to write this book, because I don’t have the skillsets to describe the magic tools. But maybe you know where to find it? I’d like for it to have lots of maps as well.
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