frecklenog

waluigi fucks, dude!

  • they/hy singular, they/them plural
hey, i'm emrys!
tumblr refugee. gay sys host.
usa. jew in progress.
nov ‘01
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hvb
@hvb

i see this all too often... person posts music (or artwork/etc) with a built-in caveat of "i know this sucks but," or "made a little thing i know it's not much but," or "the [blank] needs work and the [blank2] is whatever and the . . ." and this is such a bad habit to get yourself into. you are literally priming the listener/viewer to see flaws in your work before they even engage with it. you have altered their first impression, or worse, prevented a prospective person from even interacting with it in the first place. if i sense you're not taking pride in your work or taking it seriously or whatever, why should i? or as somebody else i know has put it, "if someone tells me their music sucks i believe them 🤷".

like, ok, ok, a ton of us struggle with not feeling good about our output (or some aspect of it), and for all sorts of reasons! everybody's trying to learn and get better, everybody's at a different point along their arc of thingmaking-skill, we are constantly comparing ourselves to others and seeing their work all around us, we each have our own goals to try and meet. it's normal to possess some vulnerability in this realm. confidence isn't built overnight and neither is one's craft. but what you shouldn't be doing is projecting that outward while you share your work. you can simply not say any of those belittling things in this process, and maybe someone listens to your thing and concludes on their own terms, for whatever reason, that it's not good! too bad for them! but maybe also they listen and they think oh wow that was pretty cool, whereas if you'd prefaced your post with "idk how to not suck at music lol" they might've instead found it amateur or simply not clicked it to begin with. how you present yourself matters!!! even outside of a professional context.

there are more productive ways of phrasing or channeling those sorts of feelings; for instance if you do really think the mixing of your song is scuffed, you could voice this as a feedback request: "feeling unsure about the [blank and/or blank2] in the mix here, how does it sound to you? any suggestions?" and now the person is primed again but in a way where they're being asked to consider it deliberately and you might be given ideas to try - a tangible step forward for you. maybe you don't want feedback; you could just say you're workshopping the mix! or just don't bring it up at all and see what people say or react to! post your thing with pride. not everything is gonna be your best work, not even close, so you don't have to pivot hard in the other direction and act like it is; but at the same time you have no idea what's going to resonate with people - somebody is gonna get struck by your lightning at the most unexpected time. that's beautiful, so don't inhibit that process!

last thing - i called it a bad habit at the beginning and i want to make an important point there. it is a habit. the more you get used to acting self-deprecating the more you'll continue to do it, the more you'll internalize those feelings. it's a habit you can break with some effort! build the better habit of presenting your work somewhere on the line between neutrally and positively. it gets easier every time! and you will add a few bricks to your confidence wall in the process.


Shadolith
@Shadolith

I had to work very hard to teach myself to see my work from the perspective of a layperson. Laypeople by definition are people who aren’t well-versed in a given discipline, and they’re not going to see the flaws in your work that you do!

I take my art very seriously and do my best to meet clients’ needs with quality, but I learned the hard way that their standards are never nearly as high as the astronomical ones to which I could feasibly hold myself.

Instead, I’ve focused on shifting my definition of a good piece of music from “I worked on this for a year and squashed every minuscule flaw with methodical prejudice” to “I had loads of fun making this and you can hear that in the final product.” If I’m not having a good time working on a piece, I prioritize changing things up in a way that maintains the joy in the process, even if I have to abandon some ambitious plans that were just grinding me into a wall.

Not only has this made me egregiously more prolific in my output, but suddenly I’m getting waaaay more practice with each passing day on a variety of challenges, and I’m having LOADS more fun with everything creative I do! Burnout feels further away than ever, and from my bolder, rougher choices has sprung delight and excitement from those who listen to my work.

Your standards for your own art are frequently going to be higher than those of your audience. Art springs from passion, and no amount of miserable grinding to chase perfection will give you a quantifiable leg up over a novice who’s having the time of their life making a silly little thing that ticks all their own boxes. “Holy shit, two cakes,” is what I’m saying!


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in reply to @hvb's post:

oh yeah i definitely needed reminding of this..

there was a really good post on here a while ago about presenting your creative work in a way which makes it easier for people to engage with it, which talked about some of this stuff too, can't find it though :/

in reply to @Shadolith's post:

Great discussion and reminder, thanks. It can be habitual to let the negative voice do the talking even after the fact, too. For example, say you share something openly without the negative preamble, and someone reacts positively. Unhelpful reactive feelings can pop up akin to "I don't deserve compliments therefore this must be disingenuous," or "this person just doesn't realize how much of a noob I am," blah, blah. When that stuff pops in it can have a harmful effect on the magical aspect of creativity for me.

I like to do some woodworking from time to time and a while back I showed off some furniture I made (the creative desk I'm currently typing from). People were admiring the overall results of my 50+ hour project and ooh-ing and ahh-ing about it, and it made me uncomfortable, so I immediately launched into pointing out all the flaws in the piece that were glaringly obvious to me from knowing it so intimately but of which nobody else had even taken notice. It's a hard habit to break, but I honestly feel the best about my work when I don't give much credence to the negative voice and let people enjoy it (or not enjoy it) for what it is, and regardless of how "good" it is. You still recognize the flaws and can learn and grow from them without giving them undue emphasis. It's an ongoing battle to squash the habit, but dang it feels nice to just get out of your own way when it happens.