How To Be Creative In One Easy Step

Sina Grace has been busy, but wrote this for BLCKSMTH recently. It’s pretty great:

Sina Grace, by the artist himself

Sina Grace, by the artist himself

There was this six-month period right after college when my friend (and former classmate) and I came to LA with the dreams of being prolific and fantastic writers, just like we were at UC Santa Cruz. In college, I received not only one but TWO awards for my thesis: a novel about a gay wizard detective (I know, right?). One of those awards was for MONEY. I also won a research grant. If life was anything like college, my proactive peers and I believed we were going to make our dreams come true on the reg.

We were in for a Super Fucking Rude Awakening.

Everybody knows that Los Angeles is a vast, alienating, and unloving city. We tried to apply what we had learned in our liberal arts university education and make a go of things. The “giving it a college try” thing definitely didn’t pan out the way we hoped, but at least it built good habits to hone my creative muscles when there is no direct paying work in front of me.

We were so adorable. Campbell (my then-classmate) and I called and e-mailed every graduate from our school to start up a local group. “No judgment! All genres accepted!  Tell your friends!” Once a week, we would all meet at a Bohemian Los Angeles cafe and workshop the pieces we had submitted two nights prior. It’s certainly an achievement that we got close to six or seven members to meet weekly, when you think about how easy it is to flake because “the 405 was being hectic”. Oh right, here’s another key fact: we were all UC Santa Cruz graduates. So emphasis on the lazy. As a group, our output was sporadic at best. I remember one week trying to make this excuse work: “I didn’t want to be selfish, so I’m taking this week to devote my time to reviewing your work, guys.” Seriously.

Turns out, writing groups are near impossible to manage. Slowly but surely, we disbanded. Our biggest problem was that some of us were poets, or novelists, or some of us were writing screenplays, and then there was Comic Book Me, who would turn out pages of comic art that I would be far too attached to for criticism.

Walking With A Ghost, by Sina Grace

Walking With A Ghost, by Sina Grace

Both Campbell and I decided to take to the Internet to receive feedback and attention. Hers was a personal blog that she used to recount hilariously embarrassing stories, a la Tina Fey’s childhood, or David Sedaris’ entire existence. I took the WWW by storm with varied autobiographical comics. Having gone to high school with the guy who would become Cobra Snake, my logic was that if you do your thing on the Internet long enough, someone will notice and give you free Adidas. It was definitely fun and allowed for our social circles to comment when they felt like it, but our efforts did not glean much by way of garnering attention from agents or editors. Putting stuff on-line was a step in the right direction, and maybe not a naive one, if you consider that we needed the time to test our writing material there before realizing we should be blindly submitting this stuff to other websites. The internet is your friend. Sometimes.

After building a bit of a library doing so many webcomics, and feeling the harsh burn of no one else publishing my work, I scrounged a few hundred dollars (either on my credit card or from meager savings) and printed a small run of books myself. The great thing about spending money on your work is that you are ten times more motivated to try to get a table at book events, or get your shit in stores– you need to make that skrillah back! With the money down the DIY drain and needing my investment recouped, I went so far as to even be a part of a local reading series. That was kind of fantastic… having my reading of a gay sorcerer sleuth get sandwiched between a girl reading memoir about her chicana upbringing, and a postmodern poet doing her best impersonation of e.e. cummings on downers. At least I got to wear a suit. Nowadays, if I’m feeling lazy and unaccomplished, I hire a local silk screener to produce some kind of new print for me to sell on-line. It’s a band-aid to a huge imagination wound.

Comopsites, by Sina Grace

Composites, by Sina Grace

If all efforts lead to nothing, then you’re looking at it the wrong way. Most people like to tell you they had dreams of being a writer, but never even wrote a single page. In my city, there are a million screenplays sitting in drawers that exist because someone had an idea, but they sit in a drawer because they don’t try to get anyone to read it. It’s a huge step to sit down and do the writing, but I have far more expectations from people who tell me they tried. It’s not enough to just do the work anymore. People are publishing on tumblr from their phones, or uploading novels to be downloaded to a nook, sans big publisher. The general person assumes they’re awful at something and then never finishes what they’ve started. Let your peers be the judges of that. At the very worst: if you spend the time to do something, and nobody says anything encouraging, you can be proud that you at least tried. Plus: I think it’s hotter to be a failed something-or-another than to be a 40-year old aspiring something-or-another (more on what I’m attracted to some other time).

I look at the above as different approaches to doing your creative work- be it writing, drawing, music, whatever- and being able responsible for the work you’ve done. Finding someone to be your cheerleader is near impossible, but the stuff Campbell and I tried in those frantic six months gave us sanity and helped us not take rejection as the end-all be-all to our pursuits. We don’t have agents banging on our doors, but we don’t have anyone telling us to stop banging on their doors, either. She has found work and appreciation outside of her adorable blog, and I think if anything, I showed a lot of important people that I can meet deadlines and turn work in on time…except of course with the writing group. None of them have hired me for anything. The golden nugget of truth I can try to squeeze out of this is such: there are a million ways to try and get your work done and get it out there at the same time. Be a doll and find what’s right for you.

When in doubt, resort to Yourself. 

To hear more from Sina, here’s his website and his Twitter.

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About mike

I'm Michael James Schneider, and I create. I'm an interior designer, an artist, a writer, and I do theatrical design. Lots of people tell me I'm great at everything. These people usually turn out to be liars. Please lower your expectations and follow me on Intragram and Vine (@BLCKSMTH), and on Twitter (@BLCKSMTHdesign).