After 4 years and nearly 200 podcast episodes, here’s 10 tips for creating online in 2022
Full Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2022/07/23/301-2229-10-tips-for-creating-online/
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10 Tips For Creating Online
Episode 200 is on the horizon. Just 4 more weeks. Yikes.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking to a Discord community full of 20 something creative artists, writers, musicians, etc. Called ‘No Notes’ the guest must speak off the cuff about their work and life for 40mins.
I started at the beginning. Family, Church, Tolkien, Warhammer, RPGs, DIY Punk, Zine making, Magic, University, Meditation. I spoke about the things I’ve done, Geekzine, various Bands, Stacktivism, Solarpunk, The Thought Menu, jobs, life, living arrangements, learning to write. I’ll admit, it was much harder than I thought it was going to be.
During the Q+A we discussed strategies for being a creative online in 2022. I thought I’d write that conversation up.
Here’s 10 bits of advice for creative people after 4 years of work and nearly 200 podcast episodes:
1. Avoid platforms that privilege the present
It is preferable to work in persistent digital mediums.
The rise of newsletters, podcasts, video essays and the rss revival speaks to this trend.
The half life of a tweet is 30mins.
It is always now on social media.
One of the most read things I’ve ever written was posted the day after the 2019 election.
I wrote that people should stop posting Twitter threads and ‘For the Love of Blarg, Start a Blog’.
That post is still getting views.
How many insightful Twitter threads from that morning after are still being read in 2022?
2. Find a Safe Platform
Develop a safe and secure platform from which to work.
Own your data.
If you must use an intermediary or 3rd party. Choose platforms with strong values.
Use open protocols where possible.
Keep backups both on and offline.
Document your work, keep notes.
Be prepared to lose everything and to reconstruct your digital life at least once.
Myspace may happen to you at any time.
3. Find Rhythm
Engage with the algorithm on your own terms.
If there is no longer a sense of linear time online, create rhythm.
If you make, create, produce creative work online then publish with a pulse.
Post content in persistent mediums with solid cadence and regularity.
Post monthly, post weekly; whatever works for you.
Once you make a start, persist. Commit.
4. Abandon Ship
Beware!
Life and circumstances may change at any time.
Do what you can, with all the integrity you can bring, in the context you are in.
If the context changes, abandon ship.
The sea is so very big, and your boat is so very very small.
5. The Body of Work Is the Work of Body
Persistent work, created with rhythm results in an accumulation of creativity.
The demonstration of effort, the work of the body, becomes practice.
Every episode of this podcast, all 16 hours of script, would fit into just 4800 tweets.
This episode alone is only 24 tweets in length.
What is the best use of your effort, time and attention?
4800 tweets is 22 tweets a day for 7 months.
What tells a more satisfying story?
A body of work or shouting into the void for half a year?
Promoting that work, and telling that story after the fact, does not diminish the integrity with which it was made
6. Be Generous
Social media in all its forms, for various reasons, encourages us to create atomic items of creative work.
Or rather, it encourages us to think about the things we create as content.
The result is work divorced from context.
At the beginning of every single URL is HTTP. Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
Extensive cross-referencing between related sections of text and other material is literally what the web is for.
As Mat Dryhurst continually reminds us, the meaning of protocol is not just a system of rules. It also means procedure or set of behaviours.
The behaviour we should all model on the web and in our lives is generosity.
Link to your own writing and link liberally to others.
Every page should feel like wikipedia.
A Retweet is not a social act.
7. Be Playful
Do whatever the hell you want on the Internet.
Do it under your own name, do it under an alias.
Write a blog, write a story, make music, make a meme.
Especially do these things if you have never done them before.
Don’t stop at just one. Make another.
It doesn’t matter if nobody saw it. Statistics are a trap.
If you enjoyed making it, make another.
8. Start a diary
Write a diary every day.
Get those words, thoughts, and feelings out.
You’ll find that once you’re done, there’s plenty more to come.
9. There’s a Book in You
It might not be a good one.
But do a NaNoWriMo.
Discover graft, not craft.
10. Your Attention Is Sovereign
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The script above is the original script written for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in the edit.
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