‘How Do You Know When Your Art Is Good?’
Metadata
Highlights
- But reality seeps in eventually. And the reality is that you’re learning in public. Even if you get nothing but praise for years, you can’t feed yourself on that alone. Because at some point, you’ll hit a new plateau creatively or you’ll fall into a sinkhole and you’ll have to tolerate the KNOWLEDGE — not the suspicion but the KNOWLEDGE, my friend! — that your work isn’t as good as you’d like it to be. And everyone can see it. (View Highlight)
- everyone who makes art often feels humiliated, paranoid, panicked, and self-hating about the inadequacy of their efforts. These sensations are a sign that you’re pushing past your former limits. (View Highlight)
- But I don’t think feeling negative and upset are signs that your art sucks. I think they’re signs that you care about your art A LOT. The more you care, the more you’ll panic. The more you stretch the boundaries of what you can do, the more you’ll conjure that Greek chorus of doubters. And the more time you spend making art and noticing these emotions and tolerating them, the better your art will become.
Eventually, you’ll make something you love. And when you do, you’ll feel even MORE disappointed when it’s not clear that everyone loved it the way you did. In fact, the more you love what you made, the more you’ll focus on the people who didn’t think it was all that great. You’ll be outraged. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? (View Highlight)
- Nothing makes you quite as defensive and childish as the ongoing attempt to make good art. Because caring a lot is a risk. Creating is a risk. Using your imagination and sharing what you imagine with strangers is a risk. Showing the contents of your heart and mind is a risk.
Creating art includes pain and anguish and defensiveness and fear. It just does.
So why do it? Because it teaches you to endure a kind of pain that’s good for you. (View Highlight)
- We pay attention and it makes us think we’re PARTICULARLY self-hating and paranoid, when most of the time, we’re just particularly ALERT. (View Highlight)
- It’s impossible to aim for great art. Saying “I will make great art” is like saying “I will skip the floundering and get right to the brilliance” and “I will skip the self-hatred and sadness and just be happy and love the fuck out of myself, every single day I’m alive” and “I will assume that the universe will always love me and everything I make.” Sometimes these strategies work, and sometimes they lead to some pretty terrible art!
The one thing that any good artist will tell you is that all artists are in the same boat. We all start with nothing and believe that we are worthless. Our awareness of these feelings of pointlessness and worthlessness is what make us artists in the first place. We imagine that people hate us and our work. Our rich imaginations make us artists. We feel sadness and pain over how inadequate our work is. These rivers of deep feeling make us artists. (View Highlight)
- Everything that keeps you from feeling good about your art — your brilliant mind, your compulsion to create, your habit of caring way too much, your despair over whether or not your work will ever amount to anything — also makes you an artist in the first place. You have these feelings because YOU HAVE THE RESOURCES TO DO THE WORK OF MAKING ART.
Every day, an artist tricks herself into creating. Every day, an artist discovers all over again what a complete nothing and a complete no one she is. She makes whatever she can fucking make anyway. A lot of it is pure shit, no doubt. Maybe it will never be good enough.
But it’s delicious anyway, isn’t it? It’s thrilling and fun to try hard to make your art better. It’s weird and deeply satisfying to aim higher and keep believing in spite of everything. Sometimes it is, anyway. Sometimes. (View Highlight)
- You are an artist because you want to have the courage to care, the courage to feel everything, the courage to connect deeply with this gorgeous, devastating, catastrophically sad world and the beautiful but doomed people in it. (View Highlight)
- Live in that dangerous place where you don’t know what the fuck is up instead. Live on the edge of what you can tolerate. Live to invent, to take risks, and to please yourself. These risks and even this pain won’t really hurt in a permanent way. These risks will make you lighter and more generous. They’ll give you clarity and grace. They’ll feed you.
You’re an artist because you spent years feeling underfed. So feed yourself. Notice how good it feels. The rest is noise and distraction. You don’t live in a world governed by other people’s approval anymore. You live somewhere new now. It’s good. Believe it. (View Highlight)
‘How Do You Know When Your Art Is Good?’
Metadata
Highlights
- But reality seeps in eventually. And the reality is that you’re learning in public. Even if you get nothing but praise for years, you can’t feed yourself on that alone. Because at some point, you’ll hit a new plateau creatively or you’ll fall into a sinkhole and you’ll have to tolerate the KNOWLEDGE — not the suspicion but the KNOWLEDGE, my friend! — that your work isn’t as good as you’d like it to be. And everyone can see it. (View Highlight)
- everyone who makes art often feels humiliated, paranoid, panicked, and self-hating about the inadequacy of their efforts. These sensations are a sign that you’re pushing past your former limits. (View Highlight)
- But I don’t think feeling negative and upset are signs that your art sucks. I think they’re signs that you care about your art A LOT. The more you care, the more you’ll panic. The more you stretch the boundaries of what you can do, the more you’ll conjure that Greek chorus of doubters. And the more time you spend making art and noticing these emotions and tolerating them, the better your art will become.
Eventually, you’ll make something you love. And when you do, you’ll feel even MORE disappointed when it’s not clear that everyone loved it the way you did. In fact, the more you love what you made, the more you’ll focus on the people who didn’t think it was all that great. You’ll be outraged. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? (View Highlight)
- Nothing makes you quite as defensive and childish as the ongoing attempt to make good art. Because caring a lot is a risk. Creating is a risk. Using your imagination and sharing what you imagine with strangers is a risk. Showing the contents of your heart and mind is a risk.
Creating art includes pain and anguish and defensiveness and fear. It just does.
So why do it? Because it teaches you to endure a kind of pain that’s good for you. (View Highlight)
- We pay attention and it makes us think we’re PARTICULARLY self-hating and paranoid, when most of the time, we’re just particularly ALERT. (View Highlight)
- It’s impossible to aim for great art. Saying “I will make great art” is like saying “I will skip the floundering and get right to the brilliance” and “I will skip the self-hatred and sadness and just be happy and love the fuck out of myself, every single day I’m alive” and “I will assume that the universe will always love me and everything I make.” Sometimes these strategies work, and sometimes they lead to some pretty terrible art!
The one thing that any good artist will tell you is that all artists are in the same boat. We all start with nothing and believe that we are worthless. Our awareness of these feelings of pointlessness and worthlessness is what make us artists in the first place. We imagine that people hate us and our work. Our rich imaginations make us artists. We feel sadness and pain over how inadequate our work is. These rivers of deep feeling make us artists. (View Highlight)
- Everything that keeps you from feeling good about your art — your brilliant mind, your compulsion to create, your habit of caring way too much, your despair over whether or not your work will ever amount to anything — also makes you an artist in the first place. You have these feelings because YOU HAVE THE RESOURCES TO DO THE WORK OF MAKING ART.
Every day, an artist tricks herself into creating. Every day, an artist discovers all over again what a complete nothing and a complete no one she is. She makes whatever she can fucking make anyway. A lot of it is pure shit, no doubt. Maybe it will never be good enough.
But it’s delicious anyway, isn’t it? It’s thrilling and fun to try hard to make your art better. It’s weird and deeply satisfying to aim higher and keep believing in spite of everything. Sometimes it is, anyway. Sometimes. (View Highlight)
- You are an artist because you want to have the courage to care, the courage to feel everything, the courage to connect deeply with this gorgeous, devastating, catastrophically sad world and the beautiful but doomed people in it. (View Highlight)
- Live in that dangerous place where you don’t know what the fuck is up instead. Live on the edge of what you can tolerate. Live to invent, to take risks, and to please yourself. These risks and even this pain won’t really hurt in a permanent way. These risks will make you lighter and more generous. They’ll give you clarity and grace. They’ll feed you.
You’re an artist because you spent years feeling underfed. So feed yourself. Notice how good it feels. The rest is noise and distraction. You don’t live in a world governed by other people’s approval anymore. You live somewhere new now. It’s good. Believe it. (View Highlight)