I’ve long subscribed to the idea that the primary benefit of the act of creating art goes to the artist. So much work is thrown out before ever seeing the light of day and most art never finds much of an audience. While creating is an act of communication, whether through image, music or words, it’s the artist that speaks and the audience reacts. The process of creation is itself valuable to the artist. Also valuable to the audience if anyone is there to appreciate it.
In most of the arts, we create a body of work and seek an audience. I make images and share them in a variety of ways including here on the site. There was Flickr, now there’s Instagram but at this point, we’re without solid social media support for my kind of photography. Since I’m producing it anyway, I remain motivated to carry the camera and make casual images, although no longer so focused on the craft.
Now having nearly completed a 75,000 word manuscript about how the brain decides almost entirely outside of our awareness, I’m now learning that non-fiction publishing is definitely not art. In fact, I’ve finally come to realize that having completed a manuscript is a distinct disadvantage in the commercial publishing world. I think I was a bit taken in by the self-publishing industry which operates a bit like social media- getting creatives to make product for free then monetizing their effort with services and platforms.
Non-fiction publishing is very crowded and there are lots of books on the brain, lots of books on irrational decision making and while none are really similar to mine in form or content, the manuscript I’ve produced has clarified my thinking and provided lots of opportunity for research, but doesn’t have the kind of simple point that the industry is looking for. It seems most likely I’ll finish the edit, self publish electronically through a few channels and move on to the next project.
I’ve enjoyed having the room to fully develop ideas as I’ve found the short form of blogging to be limited as a way to tell big stories. I do want to publish here more once the manuscript is edited and out, possibly elaborating on the ideas in the book which can serve as a basis for the ideas that’ I’ve been exploring.