How to Unfuck Yourself (Creatively Speaking)
A Manifesto, Part I
This manifesto in all its parts (for it is a series) is in response to two Substack articles:
’s recently article “HOW TO DOOMPROOF YOUR READING”, which discusses in much more detail, and far more eloquently, some of what I mention in Part I. ’s recent article, “Writer Ethics & Literary Citizenship: an FAQ”. If you aren’t familiar with it, may I recommend you spend some time with it prior to reading my response.
[This is not an academic essay. I have not spent years researching it. I may be incorrect in some of the tea leaves I’m reading. It is not all encompassing. It is not embracing conspiracies. While I have been an editor of a literary journal, I haven’t spent years in acquisitions, so I have no clue what the publishing industry is dealing with financially speaking. I am not putting blame on anyone in particular. I can only see what I see as a writer and artist. How to Unfuck Yourself (Creatively Speaking) is a working manifesto I’m writing for myself. You are free to disagree or challenge it. I hope others might relate to and help me build it further. Indeed, it is a work in progress.]
FIRST, THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE
It can be really difficult for artists, particularly writers, to free themselves from the late capitalist creative economy that appears to be meritocratic but actually isn’t. The trap is set if an artist or writer ventures beyond hobbyist scribbling or dabbling into something that could potentially involve the market. No one likes to hear that talent isn’t enough. You have to be prepared to sell yourself*, body, mind and soul. That is the truth. Talent is not enough. There are many talented artists who are never discovered. Whenever money is involved, status is involved. But even without money, status and hierarchies play a role.
With the advent of new media, much of the old school/traditional creative economy has been upended. It still exists but it’s becoming increasingly dysfunctional. What is now replacing it is something more entrepreneurial in nature. Writers, artists, dancers, actors, etc. all are now required to have a platform. The platform itself is simultaneously the business, the business model and the calling card. This was not the case even fifteen years ago.
In a recent documentary I watched, dancers are required to have large followings on their Instagram, YouTube or TikTok to even get a chance to audition for opportunities. This may not be the case for experimental modern dance companies in NYC or elsewhere. Their models may still follow a more old school route. For dancers who want to be involved in more commercial entertainment (i.e. backup dancers), this path requires built in audience via followers (and lots of them). Be prepared to sell yourself, body, mind and soul.
Before the era of the “creator economy” the path to discovery was still arduous, but the majority of gatekeepers took chances on unknown talent. The gatekeepers learned to spot talent and cultivate it. If you wanted to reach megawatt levels, you needed to have some kind of network to get you to the right people. Some people used their charm to worm their way into these circles. Others used sex or sex appeal. Some people didn’t need to use anything. Things are far more murky now. There are so many reasons why this has changed.
The new media era is both a blessing and curse for writers. The blessing is that we can immediately access our readership and audiences. Prior to this era, self publishing was considered a vanity boondoggle. But if we go back far enough, self publishing was how many of the works that are in the classic cannon exist. The late modernist era had turned away from this, especially as writing programs became attached to academia. But we are now in the era of self made writer/artist as entrepreneur. All bets are off.
Don’t be fooled though. Starting a business and leading it to success is much harder than working for someone else who is running the business side of things while you tend to the creative / artistic side. Just look at the statistics of entrepreneurship. Most small businesses fail.
Additionally, many of the platforms a writer is required to be on are jammed up with bots, spammers, talentless hacks, influencers, corporations, and trolls. The algorithms are gamed by many of these. Loads of people competing for each other’s attention. Most people on these platforms aren’t interested in what we have to offer. A poem, a play or a short story just isn’t what the majority are looking for. That’s fine. Only those within our circles seem to be interested. All while the platform rakes in money off the writer’s words. You’ve already been selling yourself without making any profit off it. You just didn’t realize it.
We are then at a crossroads. Do we continue to query and seek traditional publishers, many who are now turning to the platforms to see if writers have built-in audiences? Or do we decide to take up the mantle of writer as entrepreneur with the mantra: “if you build it, they will come”. Be prepared to sell yourself some more.
(To be fair, to be a writer / artist in this country has always been extremely difficult and entrepreneurial in nature to a large degree. There is very little funding for the arts to begin with. There has never been one way to achieve success. And success has been defined in a multitude of ways and approaches. I can’t get into these different philosophies here but I wanted to acknowledge this.)
DIY
Other artistic mediums, especially those in the performing arts, have long embraced self produced work. Though self producing and staging a play so that it is a world premiere can make it ineligible for opportunities, it can also launch careers if seen by the right people. For how can one know if a play actually has legs if it isn’t produced? How can a playwright or performer know if something works if they don’t put it out there into the world? If you’re creating avant-garde work, you’re almost completely on your own if you haven’t already established yourself. Self producing requires money. Time to pony up.
Sometimes (oftentimes), the only way to get your playwriting career going is to do it yourself. Fringe festivals exist for a reason. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival can kick start a career, if there’s enough buzz around the project. It can also be a place where you perform to two people in a pub.
When I moved from the performing arts towards the literary arts during grad school, I was very surprised about the lack of this DIY spirit. I had spent so much time creating and putting my work out into the public for people to see it. Suddenly, I was being told to wait until some editor decided my writing was good enough. Everyone in my grad program desired to be published by a legit publication. To self publish your work was considered wasteful, at least by those I knew in the program I attended.
Because most of my performance work is self produced, I didn’t have that same prejudice. It seemed more wasteful to me to not put work into the world. Not every poem or short story or essay that is repeatedly rejected is rejected because it isn’t ready. Certainly, some aren’t ready and may never be ready. But many are ready. The market is just not ready for them. The market itself is stuck.
STUCK(ISM)
One way to unfuck yourself from a market that is completely stuck is to see your writing (or theater or sculpting or painting or whatever art you practice) as what Ouellette calls “a metaphor for life.” “How to be” should be a question that is at the core of your writing.
How to exist in this era? How to be a human being who must create in a market that sees your creations only as content. The artist must create, and create the artist does. The truth is often explored in these creations. But the artist that wants to have status in a market like the one we are living in, a market that is stuck, may begin to create bullshit in order to reflect the market desires (or what the algorithm desires). They may also steal from others in order to advance themselves (I will explore this problem in Part II). In fact, much of the Internet is founded on stolen work. Some people are absolutely ready to sell everything to get their shot at fame.
Many of us have noticed just how much bullshit has been published or produced lately. It can ring untrue to us. It tends to embrace clichés or tropes. It accepts things on a superficial level and doesn’t question, poke or unearth philosophical issues underlying its foundations. It repeats things that feel acceptable but full of shit. How is this not far from what AI produces? The puppet masters control the puppets. We sense this. We know something is awry. It is the wholesale shipping off of reality in exchange for hallucinations.
Some people calling the shots, especially the ones who aren’t interested in the cultivation of the arts or the artists, who see no value in us or our work, see the next step in this trajectory we are on and that is to replace us with AI. That is the way this market is heading. Because if people aren’t reading books anymore (or watching movies), why pay someone to write or create them?
If writing (or art in any of its forms) is a metaphor for life, providing us with an expansive understanding of what it means to be human, how can the market abandon this at its core?
Dear readers, if this is the way it is going - and it certainly feels this way - the only way to escape it is to unfuck ourselves from this trajectory. Do not think you are immune to what is on the horizon, even if you are well established in your field. For the horizon is already here.
As Mary Oliver writes, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
By life, in this context, I mean your creative work.
PART II: HOW TO UNFUCK YOURSELF (Creatively Speaking)
Part II will follow in July. More to come.
Drop me a comment, like and/or restack if you enjoyed this. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
-Autumn
*Giving credit to Rose Moon, a friend from college, who recently stated on a Facebook college reunion page: “Late capitalism is [shit]. There is no out. There is no moral high-ground. We're all stuck in it. Be prepared to sell yourself.”
It's much harder than it used to be. When I finished my MFA, and was still in my opinion a real neophyte, I only had to query agents to get a lot of interest. Bad as my work was, lots wanted to read it and give me detailed comments. No longer! Now that I consider myself quite an accomplished writer (obviously perhaps wrongly!) agents rarely reply to me at all, and I almost never get a full MS. request. So I suppose I'm still struggling with how to unfuck myself. It's not that you necessarily want fame or money--honestly, I no longer care--but an audience would be nice, however small! But as for selling yourself--I still have too much pride to do that. I've seen people prostitute themselves, sometimes spiritually, sometimes physically, and I don't think that's ever a good bargain for the person who does it, regardless of the reward (which in any case is usually proffered then snatched away.) I'll be interested to read part 2, anyway.
Brilliant, both in its parts and its entirety. I am still rereading and letting it expand in my mind, heart, and life.