Many artists succeed without fulfilling their audience’s need for familiarity, but not most.

Oct 12, 2008

Many artists succeed without fulfilling their audience’s need for familiarity, but not most.

If the work you produce is the kind that people only care about if they know you, don’t be discouraged—be knowable.

Category: Arts in General, Writing

6 Responses

1

Myrddin says:

October 12, 2008 at 7:48 am

Or, I might say, probe deeper with your art until you’re working from the place everyone knows.

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2

Abraham Piper says:

October 12, 2008 at 7:56 am

Great point, Myrddin. If I’d written the post with that in mind it would’ve been better.

I guess I’ll have to settle for standing corrected in the comments section. Well, maybe not corrected, but improved.

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3

ED... says:

October 12, 2008 at 8:41 am

Yep, people like folksy, for example. On the other hand, not everything worth saying has an element of familiarity. If knowable is the goal, it’s worth distinguishing between popular and populist.

ED…

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4

Chris says:

October 13, 2008 at 8:28 am

This is a great challenge to all of us who write.

Perhaps this is why a writer will send something off to a publisher, thinking it is the best work she has ever done, and it comes back rejected. It is so meaningful personally, but not to most people?

And I guess sometimes it is a matter of God’s timing. When I applied for my first journalism assignment, all I had as to use for a clip was a decade old college lit. paper, and I immediately got an assignment that led to steady work after that. Not what I expected at first–all health issues–something I had no background or interest in (at least as a writer), but somehow as I prayed for a good angle and content, they turned out to be popular cover stories. I’m also so grateful to my editor then, Jeff Hileman at the Erie (PA) Times, who spent so much time showing me how to write for papers, since my degree was not in journalism.

Now I just have a blog (and I say that to mean singly, not to mean that blogs are less important), that is really more like a personal journal. Yet others have blogs that are universally read and enjoyed, and some may even prove to be timeless.

So some of our writing may be for personal growth and others for a wider audience. In many ways we cannot plan it; we just go with the circumstances as they unfold.

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5

s.d. smith says:

October 13, 2008 at 4:27 pm

Good thoughts. Also, I just figured out what you mean by 22 words. Beauty in boundary, tethered truth, fenced focus, ok, I’ll stop.

I like it.

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6

Piper, Abraham has 22 words, and 22 words has Piper, Abraham | S.D. Smith says:

May 15, 2009 at 9:01 pm

[...] Abraham has 22 words, and 22 words has Piper, Abraham “Many artists succeed without fulfilling their audience’s need for familiarity, but not most. If the work you produce is the kind that people only care about if they know you, don’t be [...]

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