artsyhonker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
artsyhonker) wrote2018-11-24 11:43 am
artsyhonker) wrote2018-11-24 11:43 am
Entry tags:
Communication and vulnerability and composing
I have a mailing list, "Passing Notes", which I attempt to post to monthly but generally don't get around to posting to. I currently use Mailchimp for it, and I think that's part of the problem: it turns writing a newsletter into an exercise in finding the right picture and messing about with formatting and so on, when really I just want to say "hey, this is what I've been up to this month!" to people who don't want to read my blog every day or every week or whatever. I was thinking of switching to Tinyletter and then they got taken over by Mailchimp anyway, and I'm just not sure what's involved in the conversion, and part of me thinks I really ought to be running my own mailserver and so on anyway and then it gets all tangled up with the thing where I am still using gmail and would like to move away from that. Augh.
And, of course, I also have my blog over on my webpage at http://www.artsyhonker.net -- which I've mostly been neglecting recently, except to post new releases to. I would quite like to post to it more, but getting out of the not-posting rut is hard.
I also have this blog, which I like because it isn't quite my public-facing face over there; it's useful as a scratchpad to post ideas to, either publically without then having to worry about making a post private if I decide later that it's a bad idea, or to a more select group of people who know me well (and who are mostly on Dreamwidth).
I have a Twitter account for myself, and another for Cecilia's List (also much neglected at the moment; I am doing a PhD, so, this is going to happen sometimes). I stopped spending anywhere near as much time on Twitter when I switched to Mastodon, though I have set up a crossposter now from two of the accounts, which should help a bit. I struggle to find a balance with this sort of social media between maintaining a presence/connection/whatever and putting the phone down and getting my damned work done.
I feel like the solution is probably something along the lines of blogging more regularly at artsyhonker.net. If I were posting once a week, plus whenever I had any kind of event, then writing "Passing Notes" would be much, much easier: it would, essentially, be a bunch of links to things I've already done, for people who don't want the full firehose of the blog subscription. Posting at least once a week to Cecilia's List is something I want to be doing, too, though twice a week would be better; and I could feature one or two of those posts in each issue of Passing Notes. I might still move to TinyLetter, to streamline the process somewhat. But I can't really be doing this thing of gathering people who want to hear from me, enough that they sign up to a mailing list, and then... not contacting them. There is no world in which this is good business sense for a freelance composer.
The question at this stage is how to fit that into my current schedule in a way that feels okay and doesn't become One More Thing In An Overwhelming List Of Things To Do. There are also issues around feeling like I need to perform a certain amount of Getting My Work Done every week and if I haven't been able to do that, writing blog posts feels frivolous somehow -- even if, in fact, writing the blog posts is arguably part of my work.
The temptation, while I'm doing a PhD, is to put all of this off until after the next Big Deadline. Currently I'm writing a setting of Stations of the Cross. I haven't selected all my texts yet, and I want to have a draft done by 10th December, and I'm involved in services every weekend between now and then, with a mid-week concert thrown in for good measure. I feel as if I really need to keep my head down and get the texts settled and spend the time with them and compose the music, and it feels like blogging is a distraction from that, even while I know that writing about my process will also help with the process.
Also, realistically? There will always be more deadlines, even after the PhD. There will always be competitions with deadlines. If I keep using Patreon, which I fully intend to, there will be deadlines associated with that at the end of every month.
I think there's something else going on here, where I need to write about my work to do my work but I'm also worried about the vulnerability of doing so; where I want to have connection with people who follow my blog or twitter or whatever but I'm also wary of being seen to be imperfect. It feels like the days when I was busking and didn't want to go out because people would laugh at me or not get me or decide they didn't like Bach 'cello suites played on the French horn or whatever. I'm not writing, not because I don't have time, but because I feel like I'm not good enough to be doing this.
With busking I solved this problem by going out anyway. Pitches lasted an hour, when I was in Bath, or two in London, and the occasional bad pitch is just part of the job. Go out and do the work anwyay and you might get paid. Stay in, and you definitely won't. And for every person who made fun of me there were twenty or fifty or a hundred who liked my music-making enough to put some money in my open case, and I learned to not be afraid of it any more.
And probably what it will take for me to get into writing about my work again, opening the door a little, is doing battle with my fears. Partly, that will mean finding a writing schedule I can stick to without it being too punishing; but partly it will be about writing something that I know is imperfect and posting it anyway. And then doing that again, and again.
Maybe I should start by writing about the vulnerability, as I have a little bit here.
And, of course, I also have my blog over on my webpage at http://www.artsyhonker.net -- which I've mostly been neglecting recently, except to post new releases to. I would quite like to post to it more, but getting out of the not-posting rut is hard.
I also have this blog, which I like because it isn't quite my public-facing face over there; it's useful as a scratchpad to post ideas to, either publically without then having to worry about making a post private if I decide later that it's a bad idea, or to a more select group of people who know me well (and who are mostly on Dreamwidth).
I have a Twitter account for myself, and another for Cecilia's List (also much neglected at the moment; I am doing a PhD, so, this is going to happen sometimes). I stopped spending anywhere near as much time on Twitter when I switched to Mastodon, though I have set up a crossposter now from two of the accounts, which should help a bit. I struggle to find a balance with this sort of social media between maintaining a presence/connection/whatever and putting the phone down and getting my damned work done.
I feel like the solution is probably something along the lines of blogging more regularly at artsyhonker.net. If I were posting once a week, plus whenever I had any kind of event, then writing "Passing Notes" would be much, much easier: it would, essentially, be a bunch of links to things I've already done, for people who don't want the full firehose of the blog subscription. Posting at least once a week to Cecilia's List is something I want to be doing, too, though twice a week would be better; and I could feature one or two of those posts in each issue of Passing Notes. I might still move to TinyLetter, to streamline the process somewhat. But I can't really be doing this thing of gathering people who want to hear from me, enough that they sign up to a mailing list, and then... not contacting them. There is no world in which this is good business sense for a freelance composer.
The question at this stage is how to fit that into my current schedule in a way that feels okay and doesn't become One More Thing In An Overwhelming List Of Things To Do. There are also issues around feeling like I need to perform a certain amount of Getting My Work Done every week and if I haven't been able to do that, writing blog posts feels frivolous somehow -- even if, in fact, writing the blog posts is arguably part of my work.
The temptation, while I'm doing a PhD, is to put all of this off until after the next Big Deadline. Currently I'm writing a setting of Stations of the Cross. I haven't selected all my texts yet, and I want to have a draft done by 10th December, and I'm involved in services every weekend between now and then, with a mid-week concert thrown in for good measure. I feel as if I really need to keep my head down and get the texts settled and spend the time with them and compose the music, and it feels like blogging is a distraction from that, even while I know that writing about my process will also help with the process.
Also, realistically? There will always be more deadlines, even after the PhD. There will always be competitions with deadlines. If I keep using Patreon, which I fully intend to, there will be deadlines associated with that at the end of every month.
I think there's something else going on here, where I need to write about my work to do my work but I'm also worried about the vulnerability of doing so; where I want to have connection with people who follow my blog or twitter or whatever but I'm also wary of being seen to be imperfect. It feels like the days when I was busking and didn't want to go out because people would laugh at me or not get me or decide they didn't like Bach 'cello suites played on the French horn or whatever. I'm not writing, not because I don't have time, but because I feel like I'm not good enough to be doing this.
With busking I solved this problem by going out anyway. Pitches lasted an hour, when I was in Bath, or two in London, and the occasional bad pitch is just part of the job. Go out and do the work anwyay and you might get paid. Stay in, and you definitely won't. And for every person who made fun of me there were twenty or fifty or a hundred who liked my music-making enough to put some money in my open case, and I learned to not be afraid of it any more.
And probably what it will take for me to get into writing about my work again, opening the door a little, is doing battle with my fears. Partly, that will mean finding a writing schedule I can stick to without it being too punishing; but partly it will be about writing something that I know is imperfect and posting it anyway. And then doing that again, and again.
Maybe I should start by writing about the vulnerability, as I have a little bit here.