#ScribesAndMakers Mar28. What would your best creative life look like if not bound by reality?
I would have started writing fiction well before my 60s, and I would have been successful enough not to need another job. I would have someone to do all the shitwork of life so I could spend all my time writing, reading, and traveling.
#ScribesAndMakers 28
parallel universe
Parallel Christina is a renowned writer with a gorgeous home in the mountains, the view terrific, trails leading to hilltops & waterfalls.
She has a wonderful editor who sometimes visits, & a tech person on-call. Her assistant takes care of everything non-writing related, along with her schedule (like when she’s on Colbert).
Despite a blossoming romance, she still finds time to write Ontyre bestsellers & travel.
#ScribesAndMakers Mar28. What would your best creative life look like if not bound by reality?
Living in a mossy hollow with no worries beyond whether or not the pie will be ready by the time Mrs. Possum comes over for tea.
#ScribesAndMakers Mar28. What would your best creative life look like if not bound by reality?
I'd love the ability to pause time and just sit in silence and write and read for as long as I want. Then unpause it when I'm ready. Also I have money. That'd be nice.
#ScribesAndMakers 28th March 2025. What would your best creative life look like if you weren't bound by reality?
Journeying in the Irish Otherworld on my boat, Friend, who goes wherever I want without needing me to navigate or steer, and creating by magic.
I'm piggybacking on yours @saposcat because you gave me the perspective I need to answer fully. I was thinking it was a repeat question but it's not because of the fantasy aspect.
What would your best creative life look like if you weren't bound by reality?
I would save Earth. My abstracts create opportunities for meditation & self improvement. My dream novel would inspire worldwide transformation by describing a better version of our world.
#ScribesAndMakers 2025-03-28
#ScribesAndMakers What would your best creative life look like if you weren't bound by reality?
There would be necromancer elements. A few of the people I write for are dead, they were people I knew who enjoyed my writing and have passed on. I still write for them but it would be lovely to actually write for them.
Probably would live on some hidden mountain with portals to anywhere I'd want to go, weather that always anticipated my mood and a magical house.
Plus cats, always.
#scribesandmakers What would your best creative life look like if you weren't bound by reality?
All I really need is time. So, I would need, wealth, a button to pause time, and immortality. Though I would get distracted by the time pause button.
Now there's a question, you buy a new phone which has an unexplainable extra button on the back and discover that is pauses time for every one but you. What's the first thing you'd do?
What would your best creative life look like if you weren't bound by reality?
A transdimensional portal would open between our reality and my characters’ universe so I could meet Esther and Erie
#ScribesAndMakers 2025-03-28
#ScribesAndMakers 27: Discouraged by great art?
Directly? No. I marvel, I appreciate, I commission, I keep screwing around with my own drawings.
Indirectly? Absolutely. I used to illustrate my serials, back when having an image would tend to make an update post stand out more. I was having trouble getting views, someone suggested the "amateur art style" was a turn off, or could imply the writing would be equally amateur.
I stopped illustrating. Devoted time to other things.
#ScribesAndMakers 27/3: Were you ever discouraged by great art of someone else?
I will admit, I toyed with the notion of working in a conlang until I saw Katherine Addison's. Not so much discouraged as made aware of the degree of expertise (I'd be surprised if she ISN'T a linguist) and effort-
1/2
Thank you so much, #ScribesAndMakers community, for being so helpful, and enthusiastic, with yesterday's question about expertise. We have such a treasure chest of knowledge and experience here! It will take me a while to sort through the many positive replies, to come up with some general categories, and then post it on our website as a community resource.
We will announce the page and link to it when it's done.
#ScribesAndMakers 27/3: Were you ever discouraged by great art of someone else?
I'm not prone to comparisons like that; I have my own strengths when I work, and other creative people have theirs and use them to create wonderful things. We're always going to create things differently, and that's a good thing.
Honestly, I'm much more likely to see a fantastic piece of work and feel inspired to try something similar, especially when it involves experimenting with new techniques. I love learning!
#scribesandmakers 27 Were you ever discouraged by great art of someone else? Part 3
I really did mean it never entered my head to be discouraged by someone being better at writing than me. But I do understand how people might. I am not immune to self-defeating mental habits. This one appears to have spared me. #NMSAM
#ScribesAndMakers 2503.27 — Were you ever discouraged by great art of someone else?
Only a practicing artist, author, or crafter would ask such an insightful question, from experience; okay, maybe a psychologist would. I believe it is human to compare oneself and one's creations to those who teach us, whether they know they're our teachers or not. We've learned to simulate in our heads the parents or teachers we've grown up with, who mean well or not, who critique without encouraging, who don't emphasize and collaborate with us on next steps, too. We've learned to hear echoes of their voices.
This is one of my personal flaws. Not the comparison part. The part where I judge my effort lacking, never good. Shit. I just experienced it a few days ago on book recommendation day, having encountered an indie writer so good at writing 3rd person that it felt like 1st, whose first chapter compelled me to buy the book.
I compared.
My energy crashed.
I didn't want to write.
But I'm getting better at this, and if you're empathizing (and face it, if'n you're read'n this up to this point, you are), you are learning how to tell your negativity, "Begone!"
I had a chapter to write and publish that day.
I didn't "feel" it. I did it anyway.
I focused on my unique style and how it entertained me. And the story, which surprised me. And that it was practice, regardless.
When I see others self-deprecate, I tell them to stop (or at least tell them notice how poorly they'd treated themselves). Recently I caught a follower deprecate their web-comic. I saw abstraction, minimalism, and a uniquely primitive style and smiled. I think the artist saw themselves as barely able to draw, but their rendering was strong, it set off the dialogue, and had showed motion. Nobody starts off a Rembrandt, and there was only one, ever. Or ever more than one of us. I tell myself this. The first impressionists were ridiculed as lazy. Picasso... Did cubism hit the first day? It's best not to be dear Vincent, tho. Best to strengthen that of which we're capable.
Just write. Just create. If it pleases me, I vow I'll do it better the next time, or I enjoy the thing I've created and move on. Hard. Yes. Persistence? It's key.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#ScribesAndMakers Mar 27. Were you ever discouraged by great art of someone else?
No, because I don't like "great art" generally. Don't care about Shakespeare or Dickens or Melville or whoever. I like cheesy, pulpy stuff and I am more than capable of producing it.
#ScribesAndMakers for March 27:
Were you ever discouraged by great art of someone else?
I am trying to find a way to say this that won't offend people.
I do not believe it is healthy, or best serves the artist, for your response to beauty in someone else's work to be shame in your own. It doesn't make you feel good (obviously), it wouldn't make the artist feel good (if they knew that was your gut reaction) and it lowers the overall expression of beauty in the world.
When I see the great work of others I try to direct that toward inspiring and informing my own work.
#ScribesAndMakers Mar 27. Were you ever discouraged by great art of someone else?
Is that a thing? Do people also get 'discouraged' by sunsets? or scenery?
No wonder we end up with toxic randos trying to run/ruin the country and the world.
<Grumble>Some people should not be allowed to raise children... and way too many of them have way too much money.
27. Were you ever discouraged by great art of someone else?
No. I admire. I have a tiny talent, but never pursued it with dedication. That doesn't discourage me. I do me, I'll never be a master, and that's OK.
I'm not like Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Austen's Pride and Prejudice who said, "There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I would have been a great proficient."
RMiddleton.Art 
八尺様
