But then I read this:
Quote:
Selling out is harder than it looks.
Diluting your product to make it more "commercial" will just make people like it less.
Many years ago, barely out of college, I started schlepping around the ad agencies, looking for my first job.
One fine day a Creative Director kindly agreed for me to come show him my portfolio. Hooray!
So I came to his office and showed him my work. My work was bloody awful. All of it.
Imagine the worst, cheesiest "I used to wash with Sudso but now I wash with Lemon-Fresh Rinso Extreme" vapid housewife crap. Only far worse than that.
The CD was a nice guy. You could tell he didn't think much of my work, though he was far too polite to blurt it out. Finally he quietly confessed that it wasn't doing much for him.
"Well, the target market are middle class houswives," I rambled. "They're quite conservative, so I thought I'd better tone it down..."
"You can tone it down once you've gotten the job and once the client comes after your a** with a red hot poker and tells you to tone it down," he laughed. "Till then, show me the toned-up version."
This story doesn't just happen in advertising. It happens everywhere.
Diluting your product to make it more "commercial" will just make people like it less.
Many years ago, barely out of college, I started schlepping around the ad agencies, looking for my first job.
One fine day a Creative Director kindly agreed for me to come show him my portfolio. Hooray!
So I came to his office and showed him my work. My work was bloody awful. All of it.
Imagine the worst, cheesiest "I used to wash with Sudso but now I wash with Lemon-Fresh Rinso Extreme" vapid housewife crap. Only far worse than that.
The CD was a nice guy. You could tell he didn't think much of my work, though he was far too polite to blurt it out. Finally he quietly confessed that it wasn't doing much for him.
"Well, the target market are middle class houswives," I rambled. "They're quite conservative, so I thought I'd better tone it down..."
"You can tone it down once you've gotten the job and once the client comes after your a** with a red hot poker and tells you to tone it down," he laughed. "Till then, show me the toned-up version."
This story doesn't just happen in advertising. It happens everywhere.
And that is exactly what I do.
My art, my life, and my happiness are suffering because I always "tone it down."
I am sometimes terrified to pursue an idea that I have, because I worry about what others would think of me if I did. I worry about offending people. Or scaring them. And if I do pursue it, it's like a guilty pleasure, and I never show it to anyone. It's like I have this exterior image that I have to keep clean and shiny, and all these ideas that I have inside me... well, sometimes they just don't fit that image. If I revealed them, people might see that I'm not perfect, I'm not intellectual, I'm not refined, I'm not mature, I'm not nice, I'm not completely sane. They might even see that I'm human. Heavens!
I know it's stupid. I know that I shouldn't care. I don't want to care. But that fear of what people will think of me, it's so hard to fight it. The problem is that the fear makes me ******** boring. I mean, really... who is more interesting? The crazy old lady who collects anything colored neon pink? Or the office drone who never does anything outside his programmed schedule? I know which one's more interesting to me. I'm not saying I want to be a crazy old lady, but I certainly don't want to be the drone. So why am I? Why am I afraid not to be?
Nina Paley sort of addresses that in her 'Enemies of the Muse' post:
Quote:
Fear
Because there’s something terrifying about creating. The ego loosens its grip, and however briefly there’s a loss of control. You have to give yourself over to an idea, and what’s an idea? Where did it come from? If your ego didn’t make it, who or what did? Later, you can tell yourself you were in control the whole time, the idea is “yours,” but then how come you can’t conjure another at will? If you’re so in control, why did you have writer’s block that time? Why can’t you turn the flow on and off at will, like a bathroom faucet?
And some of those ideas…they’re disturbing. What do they say about you? That idea just now - that was a stupid idea. An unoriginal idea. Kill it now, before someone else discovers how stupid and unoriginal you are.
Because there’s something terrifying about creating. The ego loosens its grip, and however briefly there’s a loss of control. You have to give yourself over to an idea, and what’s an idea? Where did it come from? If your ego didn’t make it, who or what did? Later, you can tell yourself you were in control the whole time, the idea is “yours,” but then how come you can’t conjure another at will? If you’re so in control, why did you have writer’s block that time? Why can’t you turn the flow on and off at will, like a bathroom faucet?
And some of those ideas…they’re disturbing. What do they say about you? That idea just now - that was a stupid idea. An unoriginal idea. Kill it now, before someone else discovers how stupid and unoriginal you are.
I'm making it my goal now to pursue whatever creative urge grips me. If it offends someone, then it offends them. I'm doing it for me. I'm not doing it for them. And if revealing the inner workings of my mind scares people, then I guess they never really liked me to begin with. Because they obviously didn't know me. And what good is it for someone to like you for something that you're not? Are people going to not hire me because they are shocked by something I created? Then why the hell would I want to work for them anyway? Someone else will be intrigued by the very same thing. My goal is to stop trying to please others and to be true to myself.
I'm no good at pleasing others anyway. I try, and I only ever get it wrong. (:
