Fun fact: I’m re-learning writing by learning how to draw and paint. I kid you not.
As a kid, the grownups sometimes told me I was good at drawing. And I always though, "No, I'm just good at seeing." I stopped making art for decades because growing up rarely includes the freedom to be wildly creative.
In the past weeks, I’ve been soaking up a lot of video tutorials by wildlife artists, and what I've learned changed my way I think about creative writing. A visual artists rarely paints a complex piece in one go. They start with base layers and values, then add details in small sections. They paint a bird feather by feather.
Young Yréne & Raven (the latter still needs ALL the details)
Daily sketches and art experiments that result in shitty art are considered a must-do for professional visual artists.
And I find this to be a surprising difference to indie author culture, where the consensus is: write every day to produce books, monetize every minute of your productivity to make a living.
Here’s the problem with that approach: AI is taking over content production.
In answer to the flood of AI-generated books, Amazon KDP imposed a limit to "ensure quality:” Indie authors can’t publish more than three books a day. Every day.
To compete with that, I'd have to vomit a book a day.
Sorry. Not happening.
I keep wondering if using AI for making art is solely based in the wish to make a living as an independent artist / AI-wrangler / content churner-outer.
I don’t think so.
I believe we are so afraid to make shitty art that we’re more comfortable asking AI to make “art” for us. I did it, too. But every professional artist you admire will tell you they have piles upon piles of shitty art in a dusty corner of their studio/office/laptop, because no one is a machine. We're all just people winging it and trying to find joy in life.
When we were two, three, four years old, we danced, sang, told stories, painted pictures. It was pure joy, and it was messy. Then came school. Measure up! Be serious! Produce result! Grow up! Get a job! Build a career! And thirty, forty years later, we've forgotten what unbridled joy feels like.
We say "dance like no one is watching." But what if we're allowed to dance like dorks with everyone watching, and make shitty art without seriousness, without measuring up to anything or anyone?