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comment by tacocat
tacocat  ·  3159 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Internet is Swallowing Everything Up HELP WHAT SHOULD I DO

    . It is a drug that I am willing to let myself get addicted to. And I'm not sure that's a good thing or not.

It's not a good thing. I can post stuff, my art or some trivia I know about art from spending $40,000 getting a baccalaureate certification, and people will like it. Then what? You don't want your goal to be the most famous artist on hubski or a middling Medium contributor.

You're going to have to put yourself out in a way that you get honest feedback. Negative feedback. Part of getting better is learning your weaknesses and being self critical and honest critique will get you used to that but you need to be receptive to criticism and find a place where you can get it. I don't know of such a place on the internet because everyone is either a shithead who doesn't know how to give critique or overly sensitive and giving out gold stars for effort. I don't want a fucking gold star for trying and neither should you. Find a way to humbly and anonymously submit work for criticism from people online who seem to know what they're doing. I don't think Medium is that place. It's more like posting stuff to Facebook and getting giddy when you get likes except likes are replaced by views in this situation.

Everything you make is your favorite for about five seconds, then you hate it, then it's another step towards where you're going when you see what you did wrong. At least that's how I see it.

Don't give up.

I'm primarily an artist and I've spent most all of my life getting to the point where I'm happy with almost everything I make. But I feel you about everything being done already. Every story idea I get I can reason my way out of it by thinking of something similar. No, I'm not going to do that, it's Uncle Buck. It's My Name is Earl. And it's shooting myself in the foot because it's not going to be the same, but who wants to invest that much time just to fail? Well, failure is part of learning.

This guy is one of my favorite writers, watch at the end how much rejection he went through coming from no experience to getting published and eventually getting acclaim in some circles:

Don't give up.