Coping Strategies for Creatives
How to balance the tension between making and selling for artists, musicians and creatives. My model for running the gauntlet between making and monetising.
Last month, I was asked to give a guest lecture at The Other MA (TOMA) in Southend, Essex, which defines itself as ‘an artist-run education model and exhibition Programme based in Southend on Sea which supports artists who have faced barriers accessing art education and the ‘art world’.
They asked me to talk about my creative practise and showcase some of my work creating music from plants and fungi. On the train on the way over, I came up with a model for how I reconcile my creative practise with the more ‘business-end’ of promoting and selling my art. It seemed to strike a chord, and provides a natural follow-on from my previous article on Self-Releasing Music in 2024:
Balancing Art
The dichotomy between making ones own art and receiving recognition for it is as old as time. Van Gogh being the classic example that springs to mind - a hugely influential artist and historical figure who never got to know how much impact and value his art would have made post his death. There are countless others.
In my previous article on Self-Releasing, I went into some detail on my questions around whether I should ‘release’ my music in the first place. The potential benefits of doing so being consistently challenged by the stress of the promotional gauntlet (social media and the rest) and financial cost of getting ones attention.
Perhaps the core act of being creative is benefit enough, and if it weren’t for the potential financial upside that sharing a piece of music could bring (thereby not having to get a ‘real job’), then what are you left with? - A fleeting dopamine boost when you receive some praise, which is often short-lived. More positively, the deep satisfaction you may get if you find out someone has experienced joy or gained some new insight from connecting with your art is nice, but is it really worth it?
Understanding the reality of this has become a key coping strategy for me forming the basis of my creative practise, and without wanting to sound overly pessimistic, it helps me continue returning to do what I love: coming up with creative ideas in the studio and finding that state of flow, whilst also being more comfortable exploring ways to promote my music via A State Of Flo records and this Substack.
This is how I see it:
My Experiences (i.e. all the things that have shaped me throughout my life) lead to me developing interests in certain things.
These experiences in turn lead to me developing My Skills in order to explore these interests at a deeper level. I may wish to spend hours or years training to master these skills.
The overlap between My Skills and My Experiences creates My Art, which I see as being a response to my world, in my case this is in the form of music.
I make My Friends by having shared experiences and most of my friendships maintain themselves by the continuation of having regular shared experiences throughout our lives.
The successful exploitation of My Skills will naturally mean meeting or working with people who share similar skills or work in similar fields, most of whom are not close enough to be considered friends. These are My Peers.
Then there is Everyone Else On The Entire Planet. Let’s face it, a tiny amount of the 8 billion humans living today will ever share experiences with me or work in the same field using similar skills. In terms of My Art, they may as well be alien creatures living on a different planet.
The tiny red section is My Audience, which can be defined as ‘the tiny number of people on the entire planet that might be interested in engaging with (i.e. paying for!) my art’.
Obviously if you are the artist Taylor Swift, that section will be much bigger, but for most of us it remains infinitesimally tiny, with a significantly large portion made up from ones peers and friends.
The My Art section is where I’ve learned I can find the most joy and happiness from the creative process. It is where I can find the flow experience - the unique combination of channeling my life experiences together with a set of skills that I’ve trained many hours in to master.
This graph was taken from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s classic book on ‘Flow’, which I talk about in more detail here:
Flow can be defined as the sweet spot between applied skill and overcoming a creative challenge to reach an optimum state of being.
Flow experiences are what I now believe I subconsciously seek from being creative. In my case this is usually found being in the studio creating new musical ideas, or DJ-ing to an audience and connecting with them through the unique combination of songs over the course of a set.
The Tension part is where the overlap between My Art and My Audience resides. Once you start focussing too much on how to monetise your art to sell it into your audience, you start to lose the enjoyment of being creative in the first place, therefore reducing the ability to find that flow state.
Feeling pressure to market your art in order to make a living means that you may be tempted to start seeking an audience outside of the ‘Friend/Peer’ bubble (i.e. from the ‘Everyone Else’ bubble), which isn’t going to be as easy despite the fact that it is seemingly very large.
If one can reconcile these competing tensions, then I think one may be better equipped to compartmentalise the different aspects of the creative process.
We’ve all gotta eat, right?
Yes, but perhaps it helps to make sure you understand that marketing your art will eat into the creative/making art process, and doing too much monetising rather than making could have a negative impact on the art you make in the first place. The risk is if you start to be too derivative, basing artistic decisions on what you think might sell or your audience may like rather than being true to yourself and your experiences.
Obviously feedback loops are important, but being too direct with adapting Your Art to suit Your Audience may mean you’ve ended up getting the ‘real job’ that you never wanted to have in the first place…!
I’d love to hear what you think of the model, and how your creative process works. How do you overcome the tension between making and monetising?
Please share this post with anyone you know who is an artist or creative. I would love to know what they think of this and what their coping strategies are!
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Really enjoyed reading this. Can relate to the idea of promoting/marketing becoming a job and taking time away from music. I’ve accepted that music won’t be the thing that “pays” me, if I’m lucky it might just pay for itself but the satisfaction is/has to be enough. I already have a job so I made the decision early on not to make music a job in the same way. Now a father and husband, I’m lucky to get time to listen let alone make, but that’s another story. Good luck with it all.
Thanks again.