II- When you want to do all the things
…but there are only 24 hours in a day and you’re already in your forties.
I write, obviously.
I write SFF, mostly, though Dragon Singer is structured like a romance, and my next project might have a mystery structure, and I have at least one space opera I’d like to get around to. I’ve done novels, series, novellas, a couple short stories, third person, first person, epistolary, past tense, present tense, adult, NA, YA. Hell, I’ve done fanfiction. I do whatever serves the story. (Do you see why branding myself is a nightmare?)
I make art. My favorite medium is marker, though I feel like I still have a whole lot to learn. I also like acrylic and oil painting, colored pencils, normal pencils, and charcoal. I’ve done everything from realistic portraits to dreamscapes. I’ve done fan art. I’ve done a bit of cartoony stuff. I follow a bunch of artists online, see them excelling in their very specific niches and wonder, how did they land on cutesy dragons or glow-in-the-dark skulls or hyper-realistic cityscapes as their Thing? How do you pick a Thing?
I haven’t got a clue what my Thing is.
Recently, I’ve gotten back into pottery.
I did it in college and really enjoyed it, but never really pursued it afterward because you need so much space and special equipment. However, I discovered that our local community center has a pottery class. I said “what the heck, why not?” and signed up. And I really had forgotten how much I like playing with clay. It’s probably the most forgiving medium on the planet; you can add, subtract, wipe away mistakes, and if you screw up entirely, you can wad the clay back up into a ball and start over with no material wasted. The class basically lets you make whatever you want, so I’ve been trying all kinds of things and not being too precious about any of it.
I like making ocarinas. I like carving cats. I like making dragons.
I never knew how much I needed to get back on the wheel until I did it. Throwing pots on a pottery wheel is unique among artsy pursuits. You get to play with mud. You get to be messy. But most importantly (to me, at least), you get to be bad at it. Nobody who starts wheel throwing gets the hang of it immediately. You can’t. You can know, intellectually, how it’s done…but until you actually do it, and do it a lot, you will not get it. You will be comically horrible when you start. The things you make will look like they were created by a three-year-old. It’s an expected part of the process.
Do you have any idea how freeing that is?
When you’re an artist, you develop a certain taste. Starting a new technique or new medium becomes more daunting the better you are, because everyone expects you to immediately be good at the new thing. (Or rather, the imposter syndrome in your head expects you to immediately be good at it.) When you aren’t, what ought to be fun becomes stressful. Because you're an artist, you know what looks good…and you know what you’re creating doesn’t measure up. You stop doing the new thing because that voice in your head won’t shut up long enough for you to spend time becoming good at the thing.
But you’re expected to be bad at the wheel. I’ve found that small change in perspective to be immeasurably valuable, and I’ve been trying to apply it to other areas in my life.
I’m allowed to be bad at things before I’m good at them. I’m allowed to try and fail.
I’ve been seriously considering designating this my “retirement” job
I make scentsy stuff.
I’ve made lip balm, salves, melt-and-pour soap, and I’ve attempted candles. (Have you ever smelled raw beeswax or cocoa butter? Absolutely divine.) I’ve got a shelf stacked with herbs and oils, some of which I mixed myself for certain recipes. I like to tinker with formulas, labels, the kind of shop I’d have (if I had one). I’ve made incense from scratch. Balms and salves I have a pretty good handle on, though I don’t make them as often as I’d like…mostly because it takes a while to get everything set up and then cleaned up, and then what do I do with the finished products? I can only use so much. I can’t sell the rest because I live in FL, and FL has laws about where you’re allowed to make skincare products you intend to sell (hint, not in a cluttered home art studio/office). I keep telling myself I should give candles another try. One day, I’d like to give cold process soapmaking a try.
I’ll get around to it.
I do a bit of wood carving.
Wood smells good and feels nice as you make things out of it. I’d love to have a setup with a bandsaw, a sander, all the toys people who work in wood on the regular have, but right now I only have space for a small dremel and some knives. I’m not very good at knife carving—too afraid to cut myself—but I do enjoy the dremel. My brother-in-law got me a pyrography machine for Christmas, which I really need to try out.
I used to carve and paint wands. I have a box full of them in my closet. I still collect thick, straight sticks thinking “this would make a good wand.”
However, carving is messy to do inside, and FL is too hot to do it outside, so…I don’t do it very often.
I have a much-neglected sewing machine. I do sewing projects from time to time. I really ought to take a class. I’ve done some cosplay, and I’d love to get more into it, but that’s one of those hobbies that tends to consume every spare bit of time.
I’m quite content to dabble.
I bake.
Every year at Christmas, I make and decorate gingerbread cookies. Every year, I look forward to trying new decorating techniques. Every year when I’m done, I swear I’ll never do it again because yeesh, it’s a lot of work. I also like to make Finnish korvapuusti (cinnamon rolls) and various sweet things. I make my husband a cheesecake for his birthday every year. My son got me a cookbook for Christmas and has started to help me.
I always get people at Christmas saying I should decorate cookies full-time, but I prefer to keep it a once-a-year thing.
I grow stuff.
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not great at growing stuff, mostly because I eventually get too distracted or discouraged to keep things watered. But I do enjoy the process of digging in the dirt, planting seeds, making garden plans, caring for plants. Beans love to grow for me, probably because they know I won’t eat them. I planted Thai basil once and have gotten volunteer plants popping up every year since. I have yet to successfully grow a zucchini (maybe because it knows it’s one of the few vegetables I’ll eat.) I bought a lemongrass bush that turned into a monster in our yard and has spawned at least four others. The beautyberry I planted looked pretty scraggly for its first two years, but now it’s nice and bushy. I recently planted some sweet potatoes that I hope will take over all the neglected backyard areas we’d rather not have to mow.
I’ve found that gardening is a lot like querying a book: you have a great plan, do most of the work ahead of time, and once you’ve planted all the seeds/sent all the emails, now you have to wait. And wait. And wait. And maybe, in a couple of months/years, maybe, your efforts will bear fruit. You do your bit the best you can, knowing that your success is almost completely out of your hands. That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway.
Anything I grow usually gets decimated by bugs and caterpillars before I ever get any fruit. The only yes I ever got on a query in over ten years was the one I sent to Shadow Spark. Like they say, you have to enjoy the process.
(I enjoy gardening. Querying can yeet itself into the sun.)
I’ve looked into permaculture, raising chickens, homesteading, and while it’s fascinating…I don’t think I would enjoy doing any of that full-time. At best, I’m a hobbyist.
“But Mariah, being good at a bunch of different creative things sounds like the opposite of a problem.”
Maybe. My problem is I can’t possibly do them all…let alone do them at a level that I’d be satisfied with.
I think the single perk of immortality would be the ability to master every skill and pursue every possible hobby. I’d love to learn the drums, archery, bookbinding, working with leather, jewelry making, glass blowing…but I just don’t see myself investing the time. Once you hit your forties, you really start feeling that clock slowly ticking down. You’re not going to be able to try everything and still have time to dig deep. You can’t make all the art, write all the books, read all the books, and have time for family and holidays and cats and food and taking showers and sleep and…so you get picky. Starting something new feels costly, in a way that it doesn’t in your twenties.
The other problem with having so many Things is the constant identity crisis. What, as Father Christmas from Rise of the Guardians put it, is my center? Once I open my Russian doll and uncover Gardener, Baker, Cosplayer, Carver, Chandler, Potter, Painter, Writer, Mother, Wife…what will I find in the middle? Are they all masks?
Is it terrible that I don’t know?
When you’re a mockingbird, you don’t have one song…you have all the songs, all at once.
Or none of them.
