How do you feed the green growing tip of your creative soul?
On the creative impulse, the fallacy of online business empires, and the questions that connect us back to our artist self.
I have to paint. It’s like breathing. No paint, no life. - Dorothea Rockburne
Why do you create? What is the impulse that drives you into your studio, to your writing table, your sewing machine, knitting needles, gardening shed? What is that drive that sometimes keeps you up late into the night or gets you to rise early in the morning before the rest of the house awakes, and sends you padding softly into your creative space, to the page, the paints, the fabrics, the soil, the earth?
I’ve been thinking about this impulse that we homo sapiens have — yes, all of us, whether or not you think of yourself as creative — to leave a mark to show that we were here. That we passed through this space.
And I’ve been reflecting on how that impulse contrasts with the incessant messaging that tells us that we should put our creativity and our creations up for sale. That success comes from earning an income from our art or building a huge social media following. Simply enjoying the creative process first and foremost is, somehow, no longer enough. And anyone who tells us otherwise is immediately looked upon with deep suspicion — those gatekeepers, dream-killers, nay-sayers!
Here’s the simple truth that I have slowly arrived at: there’s no money to be made by showing a different way; by saying wait, you don’t have to force your art to pay your bills! There are, after all, many ways of making a living, but art — art is about making a life.
Just so we are clear, I’m not saying that artists don’t deserve to earn from their art, or shouldn’t sell their art, or build beautiful creative businesses. Far from it!
Heck, I teach art classes online, and if Stripe {the platform Substack uses for paid subscriptions} played nice here in India, I’d turn on paid subscriptions in a heartbeat. But I wouldn’t do any of this with the expectation that my art needs to pay my bills — if it helps me to upgrade my equipment, pay for website hosting, or buy some art supplies, that would be peachy!
It’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to be okay with this. For years, I thought I was a failure because my business is nowhere near being a full time — or even a part time — gig. As of now, it’s just a small little hobby business, and I’m a-okay with that.
In fact, I’ve only recently come to the realization that a hobby biz, or perhaps eventually a side gig, is actually perfect for me, considering my personality and quirks.
For a long time, I believed the lie that the coaching industry sells — that a 6 or 7 figure business is possible even without an audience or a tiny list; that if you aren’t willing to invest in insanely expensive coaching programs, you need to work on your scarcity mindset; that all it takes to start a business is a simple idea, a laptop and an internet connection.
If you enjoy my work, please take a moment to share it so that I can bring my work and my words to more people who may appreciate them. Thank you!
But as
pointed out in a note recently, while it is technically possible to build a successful online business and there are many success stories, it is not the norm! {the replies to this note are also worth reading.}So I circle back to that creative impulse, to the innate desire that propels me into the studio most evenings and weekends. To my continued love-hate relationship with Instagram {is it possible to have Stockholm Syndrome with a social media app?}, to putting in a few hours after the 9–5 to focus on this space that I’m carving out online.
And I hold a few questions lightly as I go through my days. Questions that I invite you to take with you into your creative practice too.
Why do you create art?
What does success look like to you?
How do you bring the green growing tip1 of your artist soul to the light? How do you feed that tip?
What depletes that green growing tip of light, of energy?
How do you nurture your artist soul?
Won’t you share your answers with me in the comments, or by hitting reply on this email?
Studio Diaries is a free weekly newsletter. If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing.
You can also share excerpts of this post on social media, forward it to your friends, or share the link on your socials. Thank you for being here.
I borrowed this term from the potter and journal maker Paulus Berensohn.
For me, the drive to create is like an internal fire that can't be contained within me. Success, in my eyes, is about the personal satisfaction of bringing an idea to life, the joy of seeing my creations evolve, and the connections I make with others through my work. It's about the journey, not just the destination. I find solace in solitude, in nature's beauty, in the stories of people, and in everyday life's small moments. These experiences replenish my creative spirit.
What depletes it? Often, it's the pressure to conform, to meet external expectations, to be forced to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree.
I have different impulses that compel me to write. The most romantic is when a phrase passes through my mind that sounds beautiful. The most prolific is when I hear a voice outside of myself speaking to me. The most frequent is frustration, straight up fear, or anger. And the most practical is from a research standpoint.