Making Art versus Being An Artist—Skills that many fanfiction writers neglect · 11:45pm Sep 2nd, 2013
I don't opine too often, but I've been mulling over a particular issue lately. In the fanfic community I have encountered good writers and bad writers, but I think the bigger problem is that I don't encounter as many good artists.
Allow me to explain the distinction, as I see it. Being a writer is about writing. Being a painter is about painting. Being an artist is about organizing and presenting your ideas, and coming to terms with the reaction to them. The act of making the art and reacting to it are two completely different skill sets.
When you write a story, you are being a writer. When you step back and say "you know, I could cut this paragraph, and touch up this one", you are being an artist. When you actually cut and rewrite those paragraphs, you are being a writer. When someone comes along and says, "I hated the introduction", then you are reacting to it as an artist (regardless of the exact nature of your reaction).
Now, of course these two skillsets inform each other—to write a good story, to paint a painting, to compose a song, you must be both an artist and a writer/painter/composer. Making art requires both sets of skills.
So what skills, exactly, does being an artist entail? Glad you asked, hypothetical reader. These are (some of) the skills that I think belong under the "artist" label;
* Giving and accepting critique—hopefully this is self-explanatory.
** Appraising quality of critique—knowing which applies and which does not is an important step in forging an artistic identity.
* Peer relations—peers are resources, not competition, which is just one common fallacy I see in fanfic.
* Detaching yourself from your work—I'm not saying investing yourself in your work is bad; some of the greatest art is made when the artist puts themselves into it. Once your work is done, however, you need to be able to step back from it, both to aid in the above skills, and for matters of mental health.
* Pigeonholing and sorting ideas—this is about knowing which idea is best for which situation. A common beginner mistake I see is forcing all one's ideas into a single story/project, often because one worries they'll never find another place for it and they don't want it to "go to waste." This is but one expression of this skill, however, and arranging your ideas is an important step in giving them all the correct amount of attention.
No doubt I'm missing many, but this leads back to my original point. Too often in the fanfiction community, I see many authors who are good at one (writing/art), but not the other. The general trend seems to be good writers who are not good artists—they have the ability to write well (or at least a willingness to improve, which honestly is more important), but they do not know how to react to their own creations, or more often, to others' perceptions of it. Many of the people I've edited for have glaring self-esteem and perception problems. Still others are incapable of detaching themselves from their work. Naturally, this trend is not exclusive to just writers, but that's who I have the most experience with. I will concede that I am neither a good artist nor a good writer, but I like to think of myself as being somewhat better at the former.
I understand this is an odd idea (especially since "artist" is a synonym for "visual artist" in the public consciousness), so if anyone wants me to explain myself better, please say so.
Further reading;
Indie Game; The Movie—I think that any and every artist should watch this movie. It's three subjects are, put lightly, terrible artists. They are good game designers, as their success attests, but their inability to detach themselves from their work is a dangerous, blatant flaw.
The Prestige—this is a beautiful cautionary tale about the dangers of treating your peers as competition, and of investing too much of yourself in your chosen art.
Hmmm, that gives me some things to think about.
>It's three subjects are, put lightly, terrible artists.
Oh, look an article about two of them.
I wonder what gave you the idea to come up with this
Oh well, a lot of the things in here do rather describe me in some instances, though I have a problem with just not knowing what to do. I have an idea, but not a means of getting there. If I create one, then that is the only one. Trying to find another way of conveying the same thing ("You need to show it to me," says the EqD prereader) but in a different fashion is so terribly hard. It is probably one of the hardest things I come across in writing.
And the worst thing is that it takes someone else to show me another way because I can't think of one myself. This isn't because I am too attached to the story (I could literally drop Nightmares Don't End When You Wake Up and not bat an eyelash toward it), but simply I don't know what else to do.
But anyway, that rewrite will probably happen sometime within this week, and then be out next week. I at least consulted my massive amount of prereaders about your comment, and they did agree about it. Especially when I admitted that I had actually written it that way in the hopes of no one noticing.
Live and learn, I suppose. I am new to this whole thing, so there will be mistakes.
Anyway, have a great night/day! And thanks for the help that you didn't even need to give.
Agreed.
1324409 Glad I could help
1324417 I would have to disagree with that article. While investing yourself in your art can have great results, the damage is does to your psyche is rarely worth it. Asking that of yourself shouldn't be necessary to make great art, and patrons asking that of artists should know better. Hopefully anyone who has seen Indie Game: The Movie will agree with me.
1324435 I have edited many things for many people, and I intentionally avoided using names in this little article. If you see something of yourself in the descriptions, hopefully that means I described it well
I think one problem with art as a whole is that there are many teaching aids for the mechanics (painting, writing, etc.) but not for the other aspects (being an artist, as I've described here). Clearly I don't know you that well, but it sounds like you are still working on improving as a writer, while your artistic perspective is better than some others I have met.
"The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement." -- George Will
1324574; consistently quite concise.
1324632
Thanks! Though I sometimes wonder if that is really true. . . .
IMX, it's fairly easy to throw out the low quality critiques - the "ur chap suxx0rs" and trolls. It's harder to differentiate between good critique and mediocre critique. Picking out spelling mistakes and the like is easy, but explaining why a particular paragraph or section just doesn't jive, and more importantly suggesting how to fix it, is even harder.
While I agree somewhat, you should still remain connection to your works. Even if it's something you wrote and finished years ago, criticism on that effort might still be something that could help you now. I've had a few authors respond to my reviews with an attitude summed up as, "LOL, I'm so done with that fic I don't care anymore."
My problem with that is getting my creative juices to cooperate on focusing on everything.
1879871 For me, I think the harder part about appraising critique isn't telling if its good or not (though you are right that it can be hard to do), but telling if it's appropriate. I've had quite a few people give me reasonable suggestions for tuning up a paragraph or plotline, but you need to consider why the original was that way before you can consider changes. A lot of people I've met either accept or ignore everything, which are both unhelpful extremes.
I meant more that you should be detach yourself from your work so you can look at it objectively. Some people get very attached to their work and become unwilling to change it ("No, I can't cut that part I like it too much"). Although you make a good point; ignoring/dismissing something isn't really looking at it objectively