Why Create When the World Doesn't Care?
My sister’s hummingbird feeder. Photo by Jane Gardner
Hello there, friends! It’s been a minute—erm, a few months. I got married recently, and the Big Beautiful Day was the mental priority of the year. After the Big Beautiful Day, my new spouse and I enjoyed a luxurious week of reading and sipping margaritas by a pool in Mexico. We returned home to the Twin Cities one week ago, and I’ve spent that week catching up on the rest of life. I’ve also been struggling to ease my brain’s rusty writerly gears into a little bit of clunky movement. So, here I go. Clunk, clunk, clunk!
Planning a wedding and celebrating a wedding (can I also add “starring in a wedding”?) sure make for a mental whirlwind. I’ve spent the past week prioritizing stillness and quiet as I catch my breath for the year. Inhale, exhale. As I write this, I feel a cool breeze coming through the open window by my desk. Out the window is our mess of a front yard. Battling plants are growing into one another and weeds need to be pulled. In the middle of the nature chaos is my red hummingbird feeder that my sister gave to me earlier in the year.
My hummingbird feeder.
My sister, it should be noted, has a gorgeous yard filled with feeders and visiting critters. When she gave the hummingbird feeder to me, she explained what to do with it. It sounded simple enough: mix one part sugar with four parts water, and replace this sugar mixture at least once or twice a week—and the hummingbirds will come! I bought a little stake for it and set it up in my front yard, right where I can see it from my writing desk.
But I’ve been bad at maintaining the hummingbird feeder this year, just as I’ve been bad at keeping up with just about everything this year. That’s mostly due to the aforementioned Big Beautiful Day. But in terms of my creative process, it’s also partly due to the tough feelings that have bubbled up due to the Hollywood writers (and now actors) strike.
Creators on strike
The writers strike has made it an odd time to be an “emerging screenwriter.” All year, industry writers have shared their accounts of not being properly compensated for vital contributions to an industry that makes an absurd amount of money off their ideas. In a bullying propaganda piece in Deadline, the studios declared they want to force writers to lose their homes before coming back to the negotiation table. (Cue all of us “emerging screenwriters” retreating into the bushes à la Homer Simpson, or simply offering an Emily Litella “Nevermind!”)
Between this belittling attitude and the ubiquity of AI, many writers and other artists are having existential crises. It feels like we’ll never be respected or rewarded for creating things, so why bother?
I’ll guess that most artists are more familiar with the downs than the ups of the creative life. And whether you’re an essayist or an actor, you’re no stranger to rejection. Even during easier times, it’s possible to experience dark moments of: “I’m not even good at this, I’ll never get anywhere with this. Nobody would care if I quit this. Why am I wasting my time doing this?” Or simply: “I’m exhausted by the constant vulnerability of doing this. I could just stop, and life would be easier.” For most of us, I’m guessing, we have these dark-cloud moments, we painfully feel our way through them, we apply a “this too shall pass” mentality, and, sooner or later, we get back to creating.
But larger societal events like studios forcing artists to go on strike can really bring these unsettling feelings into sharp, sustained focus. This can affirm some of our most uncomfortable thoughts, like: the world really doesn’t care.
Why bother?
Writers strike aside, I want to hone in on this “why bother?” feeling, because this feeling is nothing new or unique. You might know that Vincent van Gogh only sold a single painting during his entire life, despite creating over 2,000 works of art. Florence Price was working multiple jobs as a single, divorced mom of two in her 40s when she submitted a symphony and a sonata to a music competition that finally helped propel her into wider recognition (and she, like many female artists, still isn’t nearly as revered as a white man with her musical talent and output would likely be). Edgar Allan Poe received $9 for “The Raven,” which is one of the most famous poems of all-time.
I know, it’s wild, but artists being fairly and generously compensated for their creative labors has never exactly been a norm. And, I don’t know about you, but I’m really grateful that all of the artworks I linked to in the previous paragraph exist.
This doesn’t mean I’m saying, “Give up the fight! Work for free! Lose your homes, writers!” Of course I want artists to be fairly and generously compensated for their creative labors—especially if those creative labors are earning other people millions of dollars. This is where the Hollywood strike gets more into matters of exploitation, which isn’t my focus here. (Presumably we’re all on board with the idea that exploitation is bad.)
What I do want to acknowledge is this: personal frustration with the world-at-large for not guaranteeing acknowledgment or reward for our creative work is not unique to 2023. Corporate callousness actually has nothing to do with those triggered feelings of “nothing I’m doing is worth it.” Those feelings are on us, my friend.
As Mr. Single-Painting-Sale van Gogh himself wrote: “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
Probably pretty lame, right?
When life gives you lemons, make sugar water
When I got back into town after our honeymoon, I dumped the nasty moldy water out of my hummingbird feeder. I cleaned it out. I whipped up a new batch of sugar water. A few days later, I cleaned it out and replaced the sugar water again. I haven’t seen a hummingbird visit. However, after a year of my brain being stretched way too thin, knowing that the feeder outside my window is being attended to feels like a major win. Like, it actually makes me feel sort of peaceful and grounded, even though nobody else cares about it.
Similarly, I’ve been writing every day. Small bits of writing, crappy bits of writing, but still. I’m attending to it.
I can’t control whether or not a hummingbird will ever deign to descend on my yard. But I can control the making of the sugar water.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
Re-defining “success”
Artists create even with the uncertainty of ever reaching the “success” that we tend to define as financial compensation, large audience, or critical acclaim.
But success on a deeper level might be better defined by our own commitment to our craft. Success is in those little moments when we know that something we just created was of higher quality than something we created in the past. It’s when we recognize a specific skill becoming sharper, our thoughts becoming smarter, our technique becoming more efficient. These are the real wins. Any external validation or opportunity is the icing on an already-filling cake.
All we can do as artists—and as backyard birdwatchers—is create, maintain, and nourish an environment that supports the arrival of the future we want. We have to find fulfillment in that work alone, regardless of whether or not that external “success” ever arrives. I say “we have to” because if we don’t, those dark clouds of “why bother?” can get very dark indeed, and that isn’t healthy for anyone. We are better than that, yeah?
As Elizabeth Gilbert proposes in Big Magic, “You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.” And, as Elizabeth Gilbert also writes in Big Magic, “for most of history people just made things, and they didn’t make such a big freaking deal out of it.”
A lot of our power as artists is in not defining our worth by the external successes and failures that we often have no control over. Demand and fight for the pay we deserve and the careers we want, absolutely (I think we can all agree van Gogh deserved a dependable salary and access to quality healthcare)—but not allowing this fight to crush our creative spirits might be the most crucial piece under our control.
Have faith
Being an artist requires an incredible amount of faith. Even though we’re not sure if that “success hummingbird” will ever land, we have to believe it’s coming in order to properly attend to the sugar water. But real success isn’t even the hummingbird coming to the feeder; success is how ready the feeder is for the hummingbird. The hummingbird itself almost becomes irrelevant.
Although, when I discussed this post with my bird-savvy sister, she assured me: “Oh, no. If you’re doing it right, the hummingbirds are definitely coming.”
Photo by Jane Gardner
Back to the outside world: “Writers are facing the most comprehensive assault on compensation and working conditions that they have seen in a generation.” Support striking WGA writers here.
In case you’re thinking, “F the creative hustle, I’m getting a hummingbird feeder,” here you go.
Rest in peace, Paul Reubens. May we all strive to take as much delight in our dreams and shenanigans as Pee-wee Herman does.