You've got to start somewhere!

I'm not sure how this is going to adapt over time, but I need to get over perfectionism, trying to do better than I had done when I had better resources, and just start now with what I have.

Rory Price - Pachacamac, Peru 2023

Creatives With all creative arts, we need time to create. Room to fail/make bad art, then improve on it and grow. We usually have this time and space when we are young. Outside of school we have time to make things without it needing to return a sale, and without needing external validation. We make for our own creativity and curiosity. Then we get adult responsibility and we need to earn a living, keep on top of the house, shop, cook, clean, organise our own doctors appointments etc. And now any spare time left is either used to sleep or prepare to make the next day of work easier. We then find ourselves so tired that we go to effortless relaxation... Netflix, Doom scrolling social media, YouTube etc. This means there is no time left for creativity. When we finally make time or find a spot of time where we also have the energy to be creative, we tend to feel it needs to be productive. We need an outcome that we can either sell, or use for external validation, as otherwise we 'wasted' the time instead of using it wisely.

Some of us, hold on tightly to our creative sides and we do regularly find time to paint, draw, make music, craft things etc. and then there is the even rarer group that turn their creativity into their career.

Creatives in work

Now this is where things get even harder, now our art does need to have a financial value, without selling our creativity, we don't eat! So now we need to have the freedom of time to be creative, room to fail, and we need to keep in mind what is true to us, as we did when we were kids, crating something that WE like ourselves, but also have external value to be able to sell it, in some form or another.

The hunt for earning a living wage for me personally, has lead towards performing popular cover songs at venues. This related to my creativity of music, but isn't actually creative "Create- ive" it's more "copy-ive". However, the value is in the connection created by already familia songs that an audience can enjoy while enjoying a drink, a meal or a dance. It is easier to get external financial validation for something already known, than for your new, unknown art.

Quick pause

I started writing this only 10minutes ago, thinking this was a short start to me actually creating something regularly to build a connection and find an audience. I wasn't expecting to start going into detail, but as this is all falling out of my brain onto paper (well the keyboard), I going to go with the flow. I hope you enjoy...

Back to it - Creatives in work

Now once we have spent our daily energy on a side mission for our art (cover gigs, commission drawings etc) we tend to want a break from it. meaning we again fall into not being creative most of the time. Our art can feel like work, not fun, creative, experimental, expression!

Ok so let's say we had enough time and energy around all of life's tasks and our income generation tasks to actually create something we like ourselves, that is true to us, and we are proud enough of to share with the world. Next comes the hardest bit.. Getting the art out there!

The Roadblocks

We already know that time and energy are low after all of life's chores, we have finally made time to make something, and now we need more time and energy to create or find an audience, to build a community around the art, or to sell it, market it, whatever the goal is for the art, if it's going out into the world, it will take work to get it seen. Any that time and energy could be put towards something that creates income now, like finding another cover gig, or commission job etc. Road Block 1 - Time Road Block 2 - Energy

But this isn't everything. Our next roadblock is a mental roadblock that is harder than finding energy. What if I share this creation that is true to me, that I'm proud of, and people hate it? This art is an extension of who I am. Any hate towards the art will feel like rejection, or hatred towards me. especially as this art come deep from within and not just a surface level conversation. The rejection will hurt deeper, and therefore I'm scare to actually release my art into the world.

Road Block 3 - Fear of rejection

We have found a day to stop and think. We have a product (a single, an album, and art piece) we are ready to promote/share/sell. We have the energy, and we have accepting it's time to put it out even if some people don't like it, we will find our audience of people who do and overtime we can build a community of people around us who like what we make and are supportive. The next choice is, where do we put our energy? We want to get people to hear my music, we'll put it on all the streaming sites, on all the videos sites, on all the download sites. But if we promote all of them at the same time, none will get enough traction to grow, so we need to pick one location to target (even if we upload it everywhere so its accessible). Then once we've chosen a location, we need to work out how we are building our audience. Social media, an email list, a blog, sites like Patreon or Skool that are designed for growing audiences, maybe we lean into video and focus on a YouTube following?

Road Block 4 - Where to put our art Road Block 5 - Where to gather our audience/community

Once we have gotten over Road Blocks 1,2 and 3, made a decision about road block 4 and 5, we realise there is still a big step missing. How do we actually get our audience to our chosen platform? Social media content, long form or short form videos, guesting on podcasts, being interviewed on radio, posters and billboards... the list goes on and on.

We only just found time and energy to create something as adults, then we needed to find more time and energy to get over the fear and choose the platform. Now we need to do some other creative things that aren't our main create thing to promote this. most of which is super time and energy hungry and often also cost money (for adverts, cameras, software for editing etc) Road Block 6 - Promotion/Marketing (creating and funding)

Another Quick Pause

Now 40minutes into writing, this is just a brain dump. I haven't thought these things out in this exact way or detail before so I could be missing steps. However how quickly this is all coming together, it's clear my subconscious has already done the work. I hope I get this kind of flow regularly when writing.

Why am I writing this now?

I have fallen trap to all of this above. I became an engineer to focus on making a living and only had bands as a side project. I kept my creative side alive with the occasional song, played in different styles and experimented without the pressure if income. so while I wasn't a fan of my day job my music really was a creative outlet.

After being made redundant 3 times in 2 years for companies going bust, I decided it was time to make my music my main income. The safest way I knew how was to grow my guitar teaching students as this was a far easier way to make reliable income than trying to make money from original music (0.003 per stream). I was good at teaching and loved supporting my students to be creative and eventually created 'Guitar Ninja' where students grade through coloured straps just like in martial arts with belts. During the Covid lockdowns I wrote a few songs, and after the world opened up, I finally paused the business to go traveling with my guitar to finally be creative for myself.

I finally have both time and freedom to be experimental and I wrote most of an album before eventually landing in Australia.

Having to focus on income generation etc I went into performing covers in venues around Brisbane, But I still managed to make time and energy to write a few more tracks, record them and get them ready for release. I knew marketing and building an audience would be hard, so I split the album up into 9 singles to release one a month: August - Do I Miss You September - Unbeatable October - Goodbye November - Self Help December - Live Before I Die January - Come Travel With Me February - Living My Best Life March - Free April - Honest (today) The plan was to do a months worth of promotion for each track and watch the audience grow so after the album was complete I could release a single that I believe is bigger than anything I've done before. However all the roadblocks came in... I need time and energy to create promotional material I didn't consciously notice, but I guess fear of rejection, failure was there too I didn't know where to focus on promoting (spotify, youtube etc) I didn't know where to build an audience (YouTube, an email chain, a blog following etc) Any routine I planned, always had interruptions, All the time I thought, I could promote music, or it feel more important to find more cover gigs to ensure I have the bills covered and can save towards a quiet weekend or two. Well today the 9th track went live on streaming sites and I haven't done any promotion for the last 4 or 5 tracks and minimal for the others except for August we did some social media posts.

So what now?

Well as the title said, "You've got to start somewhere!" I'm not sure how this is going to adapt over time, but I need to get over perfectionism, trying to do better than I had done when I had better resources, and just start now with what I have. So this is me starting. I don't have the studio space I had in the UK, the lights and cameras. I don't have the same amount of time to edit videos and create great visual content. But I do have a laptop and I can make time where I'm not on Netflix or Doomscrolling. (In fact, I have removed all social media from my phone to help with this). I've chosen my main location for my art to be Spotify, and secondary as YouTube because you don't need a subscription and I can create lyric videos. I have chosen to build an audience... Here (where ever I post this) at the moment it could be a blog, email, Patreon, Skool. I have chosen to research and chose before the end of today! This deadline means momentum with what ever knowledge I have managed to gather in the timeframe given. And how am I getting over the promotion and marketing. By starting with what I can do. Writing! If I set myself the task to make videos. I will need to set up lights, tripods, think about angles, take as many takes as needed, then edit the videos to flow smoothly, then think of titles and thumbnails and this takes hours if not days per video. I haven't got time for that, but I can sit a type between tasks. Why read?

In a world full of A.I., fake news, filters and distractions, I promise to write these myself. The only technology I am using is spell checker (you wouldn't want to see what the spelling is like when i type fast). This way all the grammatical mistakes and everything are here for you to laugh at. This will be authentic/real and I will learn as type what is most engaging and what is me just throwing more words on a page. ...and especially right now. I am just starting out so I can definitely interact with every reader personally. You, the reader, you are why I am doing this. If you like my art, and want to feel a community or connection here is the place for it. As me questions, leave comments, give me feedback on my terrible writing skills, whatever helps me improve, helps you to connect and be a part of something real. No A.I. No filters, No Bull****!