Your Creative Work Sucks, and Other Lies You Tell Yourself

This is a close-to-final draft of the first chapter of my book: Artists Don’t Have to Starve. This is longer than my usual blogs; I’d love to know if you make it to the end of the article, and most of all, if you’re motivated to talk to one of your parts or have any questions about doing parts work. I'm curious to hear any feedback.

You can leave a comment here, or you can book a 15-minute chat to talk to me in person.  Here it is:

“Art and money don’t mix.”

“Only rich people buy art. How do I find them?”

“Art is a luxury. Nobody ‘needs’ art.”

“If I sell my art, I’ll become a sellout.”

“If I don’t sell my art, I’m a total loser and my work is worthless.”

“I can’t make a living selling my art.”

“Now that everyone has a camera, no one buys photographs anymore.”

“Pricing art is impossible.”

“I’m too creative to understand money.”

I’ll bet at least one of these statements has escaped your lips. They sound right, too. Everyone with a cell phone does have a camera. That doesn’t mean photographs don’t sell. They do. Rich people do buy art. But so do poor people and people in between. Look around your home. Even if you rent a single room somewhere, I’ll bet you hung something on the walls. Everyone else does too, even if it’s only their kid’s art. Pricing art is tough, but not impossible.

My favorite one, though, is “I’m too creative to handle money.”

How do I know this is a part instead of “Just who you are?” Because handling money requires second grade math. Actually, even toddlers know addition and subtraction even if they can’t talk yet. Give one 3 cookies, then try taking one away. Even if you’re dyslexic, with some focus, you can do addition and subtraction. This part makes this sweeping pronouncement about you because it’s trying to protect you from something that you both decided was extremely dangerous.

Each part has its own Pronouncement that sounds sort of true, and is meant to keep you away from selling your art at all, or god forbid, making a living with it.

The parts decided (based on trauma you experienced about art and money and self-expression, probably starting in childhood), that making art and showing it to anyone, let alone putting it up somewhere so people can see it and maybe buy it (yikes), is too dangerous. With visibility comes threat. You and your parts have seen enough threatened and actual pain to risk any more criticism, ridicule or worse, crickets, to put your art out so people can see and buy it.

No thanks.

The truth behind why you're not seeing success

This is why affirmations; marketing, business, social media or website creation classes; yelling or cooing to yourself in the mirror that “I have a prosperity consciousness,” don’t work.

They never get to the underlying parts that took blood vows to protect you from criticism, ridicule and shame. Those parts are impervious to everything except simple conversations to understand and help them carry out their purpose, using new, more functional strategies.

Here’s how to do that.

The way out

The first step is to identify your most committed and sworn protectors.

The second step is to have a curious, compassionate conversation with each one by doing parts work.

Let’s start by identifying your most committed protectors. It’s pretty easy. They’re the loudest ones that say some of the meanest stuff. If you have an inner voice that says some version of “Your creative work sucks,” start there.

Here’s a conversation I had with that part of myself. I’ve listed the questions I asked at the end of the conversation. Feel free to use them or others that occur to you when you talk with your parts. Just remember; we’re getting to know them. Curiosity and compassion, salted with gratitude, will bring the deepest understanding.

“C” is me. “P” is the part.

C: Hi. Could I talk to the part of me that thinks my writing isn’t very good?

P: Yes.

C: Thanks. Could you tell me about yourself?

P: Yeah. I’m the part that is terrified about you getting your writing into the world. I know you have books out there already, but hardly anyone bought them. This book might be different. I can’t see how I could keep us safe if this book is popular.

C: What are you the most afraid of?

P: Criticism. You wilt in the face of it. It’s so painful for you. You freeze and can’t move. I fear for you, and us.

C: Is there a way you could feel safe?

P: Yes. Weirdly, the best way to stay safe is to stop all this writing now, and let somebody else do it and take the criticism. But I feel bad about doing that. I do see how important it is to get these ideas into the world.

I’ve been impeding your writing until you understand this topic better. You seem to have had a breakthrough about the blood vow stuff. You know what you’re talking about now. I just don’t see how we can be shielded from criticism if you finish this book.

C: Maybe there’s a way to not look at it. Maybe I could just do what some people do-never read reviews? What happens if I get too much criticism?

P: You get hugely depressed. That precipitates a whole bunch of other problems. Isolation, loneliness, maybe drinking or some other destructive stuff I don’t want to mention in public.

C: Is there a way I could integrate you into my life without having to stop writing?

P: Maybe. I guess we can see. When I think you’re in danger you could listen to me. I could send you a signal. Although you already know what I sound like. When you here the voice in your head that says, “Your writing sucks,” that’s me. Let’s talk when that happens.

C: Okay. I can do that. Anything else you want me to know?

P: You see how important my job is, right? Guarding your mental health?

C: Yes. Thank you for that. I see why I need to take you seriously. This is crucial for me. Thank you.

The first step in this process is to ask permission of the part you want to converse with. Some parts are very sensitive and might not want to talk. If the part says no, ask what conditions it needs to feel safe enough to talk to you. Unless the conditions are totally unreasonable, try to meet them.

Interested in doing parts work? Here are some questions you can use to talk to your parts.

1. May I speak to the part of me that __ ?
2. If the part says no, ask “What conditions do you need to feel safe enough to talk?”
3. Could you tell me about yourself?
4. What do you protect me from?
5. What is important about that?
6. When were you created? (It might not know. Don’t worry if it doesn’t).
7. What is your name?
8. How can I help you?
9. What do you need from me to feel safe so I can do my creative practice?
10. Do you have any advice about my creative practice?
11. Anything else you want me to know?

Follow the conversation and ask other questions I haven’t listed here, if they occur to you.

Remember that doing parts work is like going on a first date. Be kind, attentive and compassionate. Thank the part at the end for all its work. Promise to talk to it again if it wants you to.

You probably wouldn't argue with the idea that we’re all made up of different parts. If you’ve ever said, “One part of me wants to go to the gym and another part wants to watch Netflix from the couch,” you intuitively know that you have multiple parts inside you.

The thing we can miss, sometimes for our whole lives, is when a part or two take over and run the show. You can mistakenly believe that you ARE the part, as opposed to you HAVE the part.

In addition to understanding and finding compassion for these parts of you that are willing to burn down the house to save you, and beginning to introduce new strategies for them to keep protecting you without needing to burn anything, there’s another huge benefit to doing this work.

You might have noticed that when a part is speaking, someone is asking the questions.

That “someone” is your inner observer, sometimes called the Aware Ego, or the Center, or even the soul. It’s like the conductor of the orchestra. As you strengthen your awareness and relationship with your center, you automatically develop some detachment from your individual parts. Just in the way a conductor brings in the cellos when the music calls for it, she quiets them down when it’s time for the flutes to be heard. The conductor doesn’t favor the tubas over the trombones. She calls in each instrument when it’s most appropriate. Your center, who knows all the parts (or most of them, anyway), calls the right ones for the right job at the right time, instead of allowing one or two parts with their limited perspective running your life.

By doing parts work, you can learn more about how your personal "parts orchestra" works.

What would it be like to get your creative work into the world, for real, so the people who want and need your work could find you? Let me know in the comments below.