Art Requires Vulnerability
My directing prof once told us, “to get far in art you have to be vulnerable” which immediately caused an uproar of despair across the entire class. It’s so simple, and yet that has to be one of the worst things you could hear. To succeed in my goals you’re telling me I have to be open about myself? To people I don’t know? About things that actually impact me in my real life?
In short: yes.
Art is vulnerability. We betray ourselves with everything we create, because we create from our experiences; our eyes, the pasts we’re still healing from and the futures we’re afraid of—insecurities, fears, passions, secrets, they’re all there on the page, in my characters and plots and themes. Writing without that—art without that personal connection to oneself, is incapable of connecting with others.
And people search out art to be known, and understood, and connected with.
Of course, the other half of it is we have to eventually share our art with others. No matter what your goals are for your art, I believe it can only get so good from one set of eyes. Even an amazing novel is made better with editors and beta readers and rooms full of people who are enthusiastic about making it better.
And if you do want to publish, people have to actually find it and read it. Not only do you have to bleed on the page but you then have to turn it outwards to the masses and say, “hey everyone look!”
It’s advice that haunts me with how unfair it seems; I wish he wasn’t so right.
Maybe the only thing that makes it better is that you will always find someone who connects with your work, who will love it, who will finally feel seen by what you do. So even though it’s scary, please—keep creating.
You’ll find the people who make it worth it.
