When Playing to an Empty Room

It happens to us all. I think. Don't tell me if I'm wrong.

Hello readers,

I won’t sugercoat it. The last few months have been difficult. My husband and I lost someone extremely special and that occurrence came with so much heartbreak. I haven’t been doing much creative writing, unless you count all the journaling and processing. That’s why I haven’t sent out a newsletter in a while. It takes time for the words to come back.

At some point, in the midst of everything, summer turned to fall. Autumn varies wildly here in Seattle, swinging from overcast, rainy mornings to glorious, golden afternoons. I’m trying to get outside and appreciate the moments of sunlight, brief as they may be. Gotta be grateful for what you have while you have it.

Seattle in the summer, photo by me

Making peace with silence

It happened every time I produced a dance concert. In the weeks leading up to the show, I used to have the same nightmare: An audience filled with judgmental faces. The music began playing. The dancers started moving. Then, one by one, the audience left. The room was empty.

Indifference was the worst thing my subconscious could imagine, even though I’d faced empty rooms before.

Do anything creative long enough and you will come face-to-face with silence, blankness, nothingness. Zero validation. You’ll pour your whole heart into a project, only to get kicked in the ego.

I’ve been writing on Medium for a long time. Some of my stories get tons of love and others fade away as if they never existed—desperate farts released into the dead of night. Maybe they were terrible, or maybe it was the algorithm, heading, topic, timing, featured image, etc, etc, etc.

You’ve probably heard the expression, “The creme always rises.” It has the stink of wrong about it. There are too many variables at play, systemic and otherwise, when it comes to hammering out an existence within capitalistic creative industries. This isn’t exclusive to modern life. Mark Twain wrote a short story called Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven about a dude who roamed the afterlife eager to see all earth’s greatest people, only to find out everyone was losing their minds over a bunch of unknowns. History’s greatest poet had lived his entire earthly life without ever making a splash.

I do think people are more aware of the ways fame operates these days. They see the the machine working away behind the scenes, but it can still feel like a moral failing when your own efforts don’t hit. I see it a lot on twitter (also known as X, yuck, yuck)—people are devastated when their book reading goes unattended, or their project doesn’t get picked up.

This is a big, noisy, indifferent world. Success can take years of marketing, connections, buzz, luck, and even magic. Talent? Dedication? They don’t hurt, but they aren’t the whole picture.

It isn’t a referendum on your work if no one shows up. It says nothing about your value as a person if your writing doesn’t get read. Keep going. Or don’t. But, do what you want to do, because you want to do it, not because the room is empty.

And, here’s the thing I really came here to say.

Everything is so data-driven these days that, when we talk about audiences, we tend to forget we’re talking about people and not numbers. Most of us didn’t start making stuff because we wanted a certain number of followers, subscribers, conversions, or customers. It wasn’t about KPIs, or demonstrable growth. We did it because it gave us a chance to connect with real people, to share our stories, and become a part of theirs. Numbers are important, especially if you’re in this to make a living, but obsessing over them obscures the point and causes us to remove humanity from the equation.

Then, art gets choked by commerce. Creativity becomes content. That’s not what I’m here for. And, I don’t think it’s what you’re here for, either.

Thanks for reading!

~Sarah

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Recommendation Corner

(not sponsored)

Book: Girl, Woman, Other is an experimental novel by Bernadine Evaristo that plays with structure, identity, perspective, and voice. That description makes it sound kinda dull and important, but it’s sooo readable.

Television: I finished the final season of How To With John Wilson and I’m pretty sure the weirdos who like this newsletter will probably be into this particular show. It’s experimental, witty, and surprising. If you haven’t started, start now.

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Stuff I Wrote

(ungated link)

The Ineffable Taste of Unwashed Blackberries

This short story involves one of my favorite childhood memories, going out to pick blackberries with my family. Of course, things in the story get way more weird and traumatizing than they did in my childhood. It’s more fun that way.