On unsolicited advice and a tolerance for uncertainty.
The artist is a strange category of person, and where do we go for advice about that?
“Art is like beginning a sentence before you know its ending… Tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite...”
- Art & Fear, Ted Bayles and David Orland
It takes a strong stomach to make art. In my recent wintering, my stomach has been tested. And with any test, I ask myself again: do I really want to put myself through this? Do I have the guts to start again, again?
I know I’ve quoted from Art & Fear quite a bit lately; it’s true that this text has been something of a gospel through my downswing. But sometimes I find it impossible to discuss my relationship with my art and its practice with other people - primarily, people who do not make art themselves. There have been a few very well-meaning, but rather misguided conversations on this front lately. After all, advice is intended to guide. It suggests there is a clear way forward, a way of solving the issue at hand. But advising an artist is a tricky business. As the Art & Fear quote above suggests, art is all about throwing yourself into creating something whose outcome is unknowable. That’s a challenge for the artist. But to everyone else, it can be an affront.
What I’ve noticed from much of the unsolicited advice that I’ve received about my work is this: the sheer uncertainty of the nature of making art is a confrontation, and people who exist outside this seek out certainty on our behalf, often out of concern for us, which is fair enough. They problem solve by trying to locate certainty in a profession that has none. This is a unique and strange quality to the business. As a result, we seem very strange; why tolerate that level of a lack of guarantees? But alas, that’s art in a nutshell. Where do we go for advice that leads us to be able to start again (again) in a practice that comes without a clear way forward?
On advice from outside the art world
The first thing many people say when I tell them I’m a writer is, ‘I was thinking of writing a book!’
Indeed, a widely shared stat (albeit from 20 years ago now) is that 81% of Americans feel they’ve got a book in them. With the advent of BookTok and overwhelming number of influencer-writers proliferating the scene, I can’t imagine this number has gone down. There is a peculiar quality to being a writer that makes it seem as though this art-form is inherently doable. It’s not quite the same if you say, ‘I’m a portrait painter.’ The skill-barrier to entry is high enough that most people do not assume they will make great portrait painters if they’ve held a brush once. But we all probably have had to write something in our lives, and therefore most people assume that they could write a book, if they really wanted to.
There’s nothing wrong with this assumption; writing should be accessible to all who want to give it a whirl. But what this phenomenon does bring with it is a lot of people who seem to think that they know and are therefore well-placed to advise on the matter of writing a book, even if they have never done so.
The same is true of the wider industry - it is amazing how many people have tried to explain the process of getting published to me from a position of naivety, when I would never do this about their industry. Most of us are not commonly in the business of informing on modern medical practices to our local GP, or insisting we have the inside scoop on the latest tax law changes to our accountants. We assume that they are the professional, and they know what’s up. And yet artists are regarded like overgrown children, barely alert to the very world they inhabit. I think this quality comes from the incredibly vague and uncertain nature of art-making. From outside, it looks a lot like you’re not doing much, or like you should be able to simply solve road blocks or other setbacks with pure logic. But from inside, we know that’s just not how it goes.
On advice from other artists
Philip Roth puts it well, in a 1987 interview, via Reporting: Writings from the New Yorker:
There’s a tremendous uncertainty that’s built into the profession, a sustained level of doubt that supports you in some way. A good doctor isn’t in a battle with his work; a good writer is locked in a battle with his work. In most professions there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. With writing, it’s always beginning again.
This ‘beginning again’ is a blessing and a curse. He explains:
Temperamentally, we need that newness. There is a lot of repetition in the work. In fact, one skill that every writer needs it the ability to sit still in the deeply uneventful business.
Both tiring and thrilling, we begin again with no clear path every time we sit down to create something new. Not only is the wider industry an uncertain, highly gate-kept world, but the work itself remains mysterious. No matter how many times we start anew. You can learn every technique under the sun (and indeed, I talked last week about the role of ‘talent’), but the process still retains a degree of the unknown and a demand for tolerating this uncertainty until the process is completed. No matter how many times we have finished something, every new work demands the same openness to being lost, to winding tangents and mistakes, and to the same possibility of failure. Success is never assured. The only way to know is to do the work.
In short, the funny thing about everyone thinking they know how to write a book is that even the artists themselves realise they can’t totally explain the process. The uncertainty is everywhere.
Good advice, bad advice and accidental advice
What can good advice even look like in this onslaught of uncertainty? To quote Rilke:
For someone to give advice or do as much as to actually help another person a lot has to go right, an entire constellation of things has to be aligned for that to occur even once.
So, here’s me engaging with this risk - the risk that nothing I ever say will actually lead to really advising anyone. But I wanted to mention two things, bearing in mind the difficulty of advising such a person as myself. I suspect I have only ever received two really essential pieces of advice that have lifted me out of the dark in times of need. As follows:
1. Find the people who get it.
Don’t listen to the well-meaning advisers out there who are not on the path. They aren’t interested in making art. They don’t know what you’re doing. And that’s okay. You might have a million other things to exchange with that person, but not this. This is going right back to demanding your accountant advise on your stomach ache, or telling your GP how best to file your tax return. You don’t have to talk about those things with those people. Your fellow path-walkers are the ones who have been there. This isn’t to say that people who aren’t creative can’t have an important or valuable influence in your life - of course they can. But when the chips are down, why seek the person who is uncomfortable with uncertainty to advise about your uncertain path?
You’re not alone in navigating all this. The most dangerous thing we do as artists is to suggest this entire pursuit is a magical process, and that the mysticism of it must be protected, in order to feel some glimmer of legitimacy (leaning into the idea of the whole process being weird and unfathomable in order to justify being weird and unfathomable, in essence). This is pointless gatekeeping. We all know the process isn’t magical and mystical - or at least, not entirely. Much of the time it is a dirty business, it is hard won and messy. It can be monotonous, and is often more difficult than simply working the page or the canvas or the screen. There are setbacks, emotions, and other complexities to navigate. We step forward and then take ten steps back again. This work requires us to keep doing something challenging for long enough until it is done - it requires, as Roth said, for us to grapple with ourselves and our work directly. That is a test of endurance, and within it, a test of tolerance for heartbreak and frustration and a lack of guarantees.
2. Live as much as possible.
This is probably the best advice I’ve ever received. It came from a high school English teacher who was otherwise not especially encouraging. She was actually in the midst of being disparaging about the fact that I had nothing to write about - she was right. I was 18 years old and hadn’t lived. She was kind of trying to make fun of me, and yet, she accidentally helped. Talk about great advice from an unlikely source (emphasising why you don’t need to cut out every non-artist from the advice pool entirely!). That was the first time I ever heard that the best thing I could do for my craft would be to ‘live as much as possible’.
I have gone and done just this in my short life so far, living in four countries and studying very random topics and traveling everywhere and saying ‘yes’ to things and throwing myself into more nonsense than I’d care to admit. I’ve also sought out silence and stillness and dug down internally. Either which way, living with your teeth set and your walking boots on can do wonders for gathering material. I personally want to suck the juice out of life and I think this attitude has helped with my art, too.
On beginning again, again
Every new project is a baptism into a new world, carrying with it a new set of questions that require us to remain open and curious in pursuit of resolution. This seems to be part of what makes making art unique from other professions or pursuits. But also, this is not true of all art all of the time; plenty of our crafts can become highly commercial and, in a way, mechanised. In the case of writing books, some might try to ‘game’ the creation process by trying to fit within a trend or write within a certain genre that seems to be ‘easier’ to be successful in.
Quick story: I went on a date once with a budding writer who told me he wanted to become a crime novelist because his goal was ‘to make money’. I really don’t know that A=B in that situation, and I know plenty of crime writers who would likely laugh at this idea. Not to mention the obvious that, most of the time, trying to catch hold of a trend or assuming that all you need to do is to check off a list of genre conventions, will not a hit make. Publishing takes a gloriously long time, and is subject to thousands of unpredictable factors, making even the most cynical pursuit of success a very risky and unlikely business indeed.
Why even do this uncertain and unlikely work with these factors in mind? It seems to me that the irony is that artists generally engage in the work precisely because there is something to be unearthed - the excitement to unpack something unknown is half the draw, and the desire to discover is highly necessary in the face of all that monotonous (and uncertain) work ahead. Thus, unlike the lawyer or doctor who practices their calling, artists "spin the work out of themselves, discover its laws, and then present themselves turned inside out to the public gaze (in Art & Fear, quoting Anne Truitt).” We engage with uncertainty head on, and in the process, grow both as people and as artists.
Weekly extras and joys to share… ❤️🔥
The unrivalled passion of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller
Whatever you might think of Valentine’s Day, celebrating love on this day stretches back as a tradition for hundreds of years (so no, it’s not a Hallmark invention). In fact, the poet Chaucer was the first to mention St. Valentine’s Day as one for romantic celebration in his 1375 poem “Parliament of Foules":
For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.
Traditions around this day have changed of course, and it was likely assigned to February 14th to help eliminate a pagan festival that took place at the same time, but all that aside… Why not take the opportunity to put cynicism (and being a bore!) aside to celebrate love?
Therefore, this week I’m drawing your attention to the incredible letters sent between authors Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, who must be up there amongst the most romantic duos in history - or at least, in their ability to express their feelings for each other. Here is a quote from Anaïs to Henry:
I want to love you wildly. I don’t want words, but inarticulate cries, meaningless, from the bottom of my most primitive being, that flow from my belly like honey. A piercing joy, that leaves me empty, conquered, silenced.
And here’s another, from Henry to Anaïs:
Will you not stay with me, inside me always? I have come up from such depths to find you. To say that I love you isn’t enough. It’s more, more. Probe around inside me, unearth everything that’s in me.
I’ll spare you the more graphic of their exchanges, which were incredibly candid. My favourite involves his promising her a ‘literary fuck fest’ with a side of Anjou or Vermouth Cassis. But you can read more in “A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller” (sorry, no link - it’s one for secondhand stores!).
I hope you are feeling the love this week and let the people in your life know about it.
Until next week,
Be well.
CCx