XIX- When you’re too boring to be anything but derivative

I decided at the start of this year that I would not be going on the 2025 Writing Excuses cruise. As much as I’d like to go, we knew moving was going to consume a lot of money and I just couldn’t justify the expense. (And anyway, it turns out Sleep Token is playing Greensboro during the stretch of time I’d be gone, so ya know, not going kinda worked out in my favor).

I’ve really enjoyed the last two times I’ve gone. I always come back with a lot to think about. Last time, I did a lot of brainstorming that more or less centered around, “What is my through line as a creator? What’s the muchness that carries all my creative work and makes it uniquely mine?” And…I really couldn’t come up with much. Maybe some common themes I seem to like exploring, some turns of phrase.

So last night, I put the question to my husband, and to my surprise, his answer was immediate.

“Fandom, I guess?”

Cue this face:

Because…he’s not wrong. My first thought was actually more along the lines of, “Well, fuck, that’s embarrassing.”

Because fandom is not a Serious Artistic Pursuit. You do it in your spare time. You participate because it’s fun. It’s not that it isn’t art; I’ve seen people make fan-related stuff that’s blown me out of the water. But anything you make is, by its nature, piggybacking off someone else’s hard work. It’s not fully yours. You can’t sell it. You can’t even really build on it, other than the practical skills you hone while wasting time creating. It seems so…trite, to call oneself primarily a fandom artist. Silly. Useless.

Ooh…there’s that word again.

#

Gonna bring up music again, but not for the reason you fear.

Music has always been a vast well of inspiration for my art, and I’ve wondered in the past if it’s because it’s the one sandbox I’ve not got the tools, talent, or experience to play in? My brain loves melodies, but it does not create them. I’m forever an observer. I don’t get that little peek backstage, “I could do that if I put in the time” feeling the way I do with visual art, with novel writing, with crafting, etc.

I bring it up because music carries emotion like little else on this planet. Artists can say so much, so poignantly. It is expected that musicians feel and express things deeply, and thus it surprises no one that many musicians carry a lot of baggage and trauma. We, the listeners, then form a love/hate relationship with that trauma, because that artist has made it beautiful, but we feel awful that the artist went through all that…and we’re also kind of glad they did because they’ve turned it into such a gift…but finding a person’s pain beautiful feels super shitty…but that pain spoke to you when nothing else did…you get it. Love/hate.

We want our favorite artists to get better, but at the same time…once they heal, will they keep creating the things we love? Will it have the same depth and connection? Are you a terrible, terrible person for even asking that, or worse, for liking their art better when they were in pain?

In the visual art world, you have names like van Gogh or Dali. Brilliant, tortured geniuses, creating things the world wasn’t ready for. In other words, Artists. The profession comes with an expectation of sad eyes and a broken heart.

But what if that’s not you?

#

One of the things I struggle with in my creative life is feeling like I’m boring.

I’ll read a brilliant book…and then learn that the author is an Egyptologist or worked in a trauma ward for twenty years or has visited every country on Earth, and I’ll think, “Oh. Well, they’ve lived an interesting life, no wonder their stories are fire.”

I’ll look at a stunning painting or photograph…turns out the artist survived being trafficked or works as a marine biologist or lived on the streets of Thailand for five years, and I’ll think, “Oh. Well, they’ve channeled all that experience into their work, no wonder it’s so good.”

And so on.

(Another reason to love music. I can just soak in it and not feel like I’m competing with the creator.)

And every time, I will feel like an empty vessel in comparison. I’m a housewife. I live in an ordinary city. I don’t go out much. I’ve always had good people around me, taking care of me. I have pretty normal hobbies. I’ve done a bit of traveling but nothing outrageous. I don’t have any fancy degrees, haven’t gone to any fancy schools, haven’t worked any life-changing jobs. Heck, I haven’t even worked that many normal, ordinary jobs. I’ve had a few heartbreaks over the years, but I’ve never been in the kind of bad, toxic relationship that inspires entire bodies of artistic work.

Any time I have to write any kind of “about me” blurb, I feel like I don’t know anybody and I haven’t really done anything. I don’t have some vast well of past experience, good or bad, to draw from for my art. There’s nothing tortured about me. (Do I want there to be? Absolutely fucking not. I know I have it good.)

It’s just a little too easy to feel like I’m just forever mooching off art that already exists, because I don’t have it in me to create my own tortured masterpieces.

#

I remembered something, though.

A long time ago, when I was first starting on my writing journey, I realized something about myself that I’d honestly forgotten until I started writing this post.

My writing belongs to me, but my art belongs to everyone else.

Every artsy thing I do—visual, crafting, sewing, whatever—I only feel inspired when I’m doing it for someone else or in homage to something else. Music I like. Characters in shows and books I like. Taking something that exists and pushing it a step further. I feel like even the pet portraits I did for a while fall into this category. I’m a fucking fan artist…and I guess I need to stop feeling like that’s something I should be ashamed of.

Writing is the only creative avenue where I really feel the urge to work from scratch. It’s where my characters live, my plot lines, my worlds, the themes and questions and truths I hold dear to my heart. And even then…sometimes I just want to do something unique with someone else’s characters and world. Take it a step further, take it somewhere else.

Does that make me a lesser artist? A fake, a cheat, a copycat?

Or just…a mockingbird?