The modern creator lives in a world of statistics–views, clicks, conversions, followers, sales. These things are vital for anyone striving to make their product viral or hoping to monetize their idea.
I have never been good at thinking this way.
I do not think it wrong for a person to pursue these things. If you believe in an idea and are committed to sharing it with others, it might even be necessary in our new Internet-saturated culture to obsess over these numbers. But I’m unable and/or unwilling to.
There are reasons why. Examining those reasons are not the purpose of this blog. I’d rather ruminate on a concept that has intrigued me now and again, a different way of creating. I’d like to consider the small-time artist.
I work for the family business. We’re caught somewhere between the old-school mom-and-pop store and the everyone-shops-on-the-Web new generation store. It’s been a rough transition, and I doubt we’ll ever fully adopt the new way of the business world–fast, cheap, superhumanly efficient, stylish, and ever-connecting. The Hayden family is not built that way. But straddling between these two worlds has given me some things to consider.
Is there such a thing as an ambition to remain small? If you’re good at something, you’re told to grow your product, double your revenue, reach the next 1000 followers, start a chain. But what if you own a office supply store on Main Street, Small Town, USA, and are content to serve a small clientele and simply make a living? Or, more to the point for us creative types, can a writer be allowed to simply create in his little niche, to create well, and not be eternally unhappy at his relative anonymity?
Where I live, we have fairs all over the place. You can see tractor pulls, pig wrestling, homemade crafts, instruments no one plays anymore being played, old songs being sung one last time, obsolete machines and techniques being taught to one more generation. No one (or very few) make a living at these things, but they communicate life; they hold a spice and variety that the modern world, with its infinite sleek choices, rarely does.
Often, these splashes of culture are inefficient, hodge-podge, informal, and eccentric. Is that inherently a bad thing?
The Internet can be a wonderful place; it connects us to innumerable experiences and opportunities that we might never otherwise come into contact with. But, I wonder, what would the world look like if more writers strove to write local, just as we’re encouraged by small businesses to “Shop Local.” Not they they would write about local events or in the local flavor, but that they would be more concerned about the handful of neighbors who could read their work than the millions out there who might, with enough social networking, finally read it.
In many ways, I straddle this divide in my creative life. Children of the Wells is on the web, hoping to spread its influence. But I’ve recently learned that writing a monthly flash fiction for the local four county advertiser is its own unique experience. There’s something to be said for some person you half-know stopping you at the BMV to say she’s read your latest story.
Of course, sometimes, I wonder what would happen if they’d pick up The Select’s Bodyguard as well.
