Creative types: Honor your slashes, and Slash.
I had a sweet, inoffensive topic all ready to go for Catfish Parade, until Mars Dorian’s post yesterday came across my Twitter feed.
I love Mars Dorian. I always feel kicked into gear by his writing. I’ve never met him, we’ve never emailed (yet), but this time his post really got in my craw.
If you don’t have the time to click on the link, he’s talking about a trend he’s seen in how people describe themselves on the web. Here’s a sample of what Mars says:
It’s a terrible description that more and more people give themselves.
It goes like this:
I’m a writer / entrepreneur / traveler / consultant / designer and blogger.
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaang.
That’s the sound of shooting yourself in the foot.You know what this tells me ? That YOU suck at each and everyone of them !
OK, so you can look over at my self-description in the corner of my blog and see why this post hit home. I’m a lister, a multi-categorist, a slash user.
Mars goes on to explain that by having so many caveats, “slashers” like me are afraid to commit to one thing we’re good at; we have a zillion Plan B’s if the main career doesn’t work out; and we can’t spend enough time being good at everything, so we end up being mediocre at lots of things.
Well. I spent a lot of time yesterday worrying about this. I rewrote my description of myself several times in my head, but I never actually changed it. I’m glad I didn’t. In that time thinking this through, I realized a couple of important things.
First: I do not suck.
I’m actually damn good at lots of the things in my slash-list. I might not be able to do all of them for my career, but I don’t want all of them to be my career, anyway.
Second, I was filled with stress over a rule, Mars’ rule, that I hadn’t heard of before yesterday. I was feeling the need to CONFORM.
But my blog, and the entire Great Create, and my whole point here, is to question the rules, and wreck them if they don’t serve me.
It’s NOT my point to revise everything I do every time I hear about a new rule.
Once I realized that, I relaxed and left my slashes just where they are. For now.
I decided I may revise them later. But on my terms. When I decide I need to.
Because Mars is making a good point, mostly.
His point is summed up in a masterful way by Mark Twain (Twain says everything better than everybody). In The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, Twain writes:
“Put all your eggs in one basket–and watch that basket!”
And they’re right. My main thing is writing. And I do put all my eggs in that basket.
But the long list of other things I do? That’s PART of being a writer for me.
I love music and playing music. Listening to great songs and playing guitar make my sentences have better sound and rhythm. I love cooking and do it well–and that helps me describe things with words that bring your taste buds alive. I have some of my best ideas for plot while I’m swimming laps. I like sports and people-watching, and those help me think deeper about characters. I like eavesdropping and catching curious turns of phrase, and that helps me write better dialogue.
That’s the value I see in being multi-passionate and describing yourself with lots of slashes. Creative people and independent thinkers use the world around them–including all the things they like to do–as inspiration for their main gig.
And that’s true for every creative person I know. No creative person who is any good is just creative in one way. Many of our extra creative acts like playing guitar and drawing, and even sometimes mundane everyday stuff like doing laundry, somehow feed into our big creative outlet. We might not even know how, exactly, but they damn sure do.
Think about it: would anybody want to read works by a writer who only sat alone in a room, typing away like a robot, never interacting with another human, never living their own life somehow? What could that writer possibly have to share with me?
Think about it this way, too: the people that we think of as being the best at something are really awesome at lots of things.
Michael Jackson, as Mars mentions, is “a pop music god.” But think about what that took. He had to be an amazing singer, an incredible dancer, a genius self-marketer, a tireless performer, a style icon, and a prolific songwriter.
A lot of elements go into being a successful writer. Amanda Hocking, the darling meteor of the self-publishing movement, doesn’t just sit and write books, even though she’s made millions of dollars. She’s a very savvy marketer of her books, and attributes most of her success to those efforts, not just her writing.
Look at Nick Cave, who fronts an awesome band, acts, and writes books. Look at Steve Martin, actor, comedian, writer, amazing tweeter.
In the blogosphere where we see so many of these slashers, look at Aliventures and all her different modes of writing. Or Melissa Dinwiddie and her quest for a multi-passionate life. Or Wicked Whimsy’s diatribe against labels. Or Puttylike’s “Undeclared for Life” manifesto for multipotentialites.
I don’t see them having a problem with slashes.
But being multi-passionate and multi-potentialistic can have a down side for some people. I see the point there, too.
It’s about focus, as he says in the comments to his post. Everything that helps you with your main gig is important; and you should ignore the rest. Okay, not bad.
But creativity comes from surprising connections between things, and you only find those things by being curious and following your interests. That doesn’t happen if you stick only within your main gig’s sphere.
Mars is also talking about marketing. People want to know exactly what they’ll get from you as an artist or a blogger or business person. They want to know what you are about and what you do, as simply and quickly and reductively as possible.
Sometimes you have to give people what they want, then let them see more when they’re ready.
That’s something I’m still thinking through. I’m a writer. I’m on a crusade for creative thinking about careers, too. And everything else in my list is an insanely important influence on those two main things.
Nobody has time to be awesome at everything they’re interested in–but if people never do anything except their main focus, they end up sucking at that main focus, too, because they suck at life.
Not all of the slash elements can be my career. But like I said, I don’t want them to be. I’m after experiences that feed my creativity. So the slashes stay, for now.
%%%%%
What about you? What is your main gig, and how many different things go into your basket as part of it? What’s in your slash-list? Please share it with us in the comments!
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I’m glad I’m not the only one who (momentarily) gets caught up in what other, more established bloggers say about what we “should” do. A couple of weeks ago I was almost paralyzed, spending 5+ hours on each post, agonizing between sidewalk-courtyard-walkway and that kind of stuff. I finally decided to trust ME, because if it wasn’t enjoyable anymore, who cares if anyone else enjoys it, right? (Which is not the same as effortless…no such thing to create quality stuff.)
I wrote “Get Over Your Damn Self” as a way to liberate myself from what “others” say. It’s not that what they have to say isn’t true or valid, it’s just that *right now* it isn’t helpful to me.
YES to filing it away to use on your own terms. Those are the only terms that matter. Nice, ballsy post.
Thanks, Ellen! I love that: “Get Over Your Damn Self” as a liberation creed. Excellent. Let’s keep our own terms at the forefront–thanks for that great line!
I basically took Mars’ post yesterday as a big “fuck you” to our community.
First of all, he got his facts wrong. Seth Godin is a self-proclaimed master of all trades. His MESSAGE revolves around marketing, but his MEDIUM (actually that’s media– plural) involves writing, speaking, entrepreneurship, consulting, and so on. He wears many many hats. In his own words:
http://books.google.com/books?id=tQWycqKWUyEC&lpg=PA35&dq=seth%20clinging%20to%20your%20job%20title&pg=PA35#v=onepage&q&f=false
I like Mars. I think he’s an insanely creative dude with a lot of brilliant stuff to say. But he’s clearly not a mulitpotentialite and doesn’t get it. When he sees “slashers” on Twitter, he thinks they must suck at everything they do. But when I see slashers, I think, “there’s one of us! An interesting, multifaceted, multi-talented person.”
If society automatically assumes that having many skills makes you a dilettante, that’s a problem with society. It’s a socially-constructed stigma that’s beat into us from childhood and throughout the school system. Totally culturally-based. Back in Renaissance times, for example, people were encouraged to become highly skilled in many different areas. They believed in humans were “limitless in their capacities for development”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath
I also believe that having multiple skill-sets will help you STAND OUT in a sea of specialists. It might even be necessary these days…
http://remarkablogger.com/2011/01/14/renaissance-person-2-0/
I’m so glad Mars’ post didn’t intimidate you into shying away from your true nature Baker. Embrace your slasherdom!
And thank you for writing such a wonderful post!
It wasn’t meant to be a “fuck you” – diversity is NEEDED if you use it for your (DIY) career. Of course it rocks to have and use different streams of creativity, but you have to focus on them on your “Thing” – your legacy project rather than dabbling in too many DIFFERENT careers and NOT dominating one in particular.
Hey Emilie,
Thanks for your awesome comment! (Everybody else: Emilie turned this into a super swell post over at her site. Check it here.)
I also love the reframing of the slash as something that actually will HELP you stand out–nice call!
Right on, Emilie!
I find it fascinating that our era is so enamored of specialists. Not every era or culture has been this way. As you rightly point out, in Renaissance times it was the multi-passionate who was most revered.
It seems (though of course I can’t say from experience!) that people in Renaissance Europe weren’t expected to limit and niche themselves. (Well, men at least. Women were pretty much expected to be barefoot and pregnant.) Today, if you don’t limit yourself, you’re automatically assumed to be a dilettante.
I also applaud you, Baker, from sticking to your guns. I feel pulled in one direction or another all the time by what “the experts” or “authorities” or “people who are more famous/respected/whatever” say, but the only thing that leads to true happiness is sticking with what’s right for me.
I went through the same emotions! I read that post and quickly thought, damn, he’s right! I just want to sound impressive. So I popped over to my twitter, my about.me, and my own about me section on my blog. The crazy thing is, I actually like all of those. So not a single one changed. Thats who I am.
I’m willing to guess that Michael Jackson and Seth Godin also had to give a little about me and list their talents before they were huge. Its the way it goes. I no longer see it as a bad thing. And it’s not a fear to commit, it’s a belief in who you are.
Hey David–great to hear I wasn’t alone stressing out about my slashes! I love how you put it–they’re a belief in who we are. Lots of different elements, broad, bold, interested. I’m loving all this embracing of the slash! Thanks!
[...] over at Catfish Parade published a response post and I couldn’t hold back any longer. I had to [...]
I just left the longest comment ever (this might spawn a blog post for me too, haha, we’ll see…) over at Emilie’s blog, so I’m mostly commented out. But this gets a big HELL YES from me and also, thanks for the shoutout dude
I think being a scanner is a huge asset in many areas of life, especially creativity, because it lets me see connections and patterns that other people missed – and after all, isn’t that what creativity is? Seeing connections and putting something together in a new way?
Hi Michelle,
I read your comment over at Puttylike and wholeheartedly agree. Thanks for stopping by to leave a note here, too, and I think you should totally work that into a blog post. I’m way happy to give you a shoutout, slasher/scanner compadre!
Really, Mars’ work tends toward the precious. It’s meant to inspire. He gets a little lost in rhetoric (perhaps to bolster some kind of demagoguery).
That said, I love this post. Love the accents of slash. You’re full of so much creativity, I think the post is just a good affirmation that we no longer live in the dark ages of “doctor/lawyer/banker/engineer…or zero.”
There is a place for us. There is a time for us. There is one sweet moment set aside for us.
Now I’m channeling Freddie Mercury–good news for people who love bad news.
P.S. I use a “|” and not a “/”. I’m a a strike-through, not a slasher. So there MD. If you’re good at one thing you’re BORING. Now I’m channeling Mars.
Already read Machiavelli and Marx…new propaganda w/out spell checking is losing its flavor.
Great start, Baker.
Wish we could share a beer,
Mark
Hey Mark,
I agree that Mars is inspiring–like I said in the post, I always feel an immediate need to take action, but this time I had to question it when the action didn’t feel right.
So glad you liked the post, and I love the channeling of Freddie Mercury for our theme song. I hope Slash gets a little popularity bump out of it, too!
Amen!
Came on over from Puttylike – loved what Emilie shared and wanted to read your whole post.
I had a similar twinge from reading Mars’ post and really felt disappointed that he didn’t get it.
Everything you said about all interests feeding each other is spot on. I cannot choose just one interest, and my lifestyle even requires me to juggle them (as a parent, volunteer, creative crafter, cook, gardener, writer and photographer). Parenting has actually shown me how great it is that I am willing and eager to learn new things. My many hats come in handy every day.
So, thanks for this post
Thanks for coming over, Holli! Puttylike’s a great place to be, so glad to get recommended there. You’ve expanded the scope of interests that feed creativity really awesomely here, too–parenting as a key component and outlet for creativity sounds like a great use of the slash approach. My hat’s off to you on that–thanks!
I felt exactly the way you felt Baker.
In my case I went over to my twitter bio, took a look at it for a while And I wondered how I could get some things away from the other things I do. In my case I was still having challenge understanding and interpreting my multipotential attitude. that was why Mars’ post hit me that way. After reading Emilie’s post (which directed me here) I was able to get my senses back. I am glad this happened, because it is helping me get a better picture of how to handle my slasher nature.
what did I do?
I re-wrote my bio, but I couldn’t help but leave the fact that I am into mobile/web/marketing/photography. Just as you said in this post, being creative means we’d find the connection between out multiple interests. That is exactly what I eventually did.
I am proud to be associated with this tribe slashers/scanners/multipods/multipotentialites et’al. The idea of doing just a single thing for the rest of my life suck. Having a manifesto, like what Emilie suggested in one of her writing would be a better option.
I am leaving my slashes. I have found interconnectedness in my slashes, so they stay.
Thank you Baker.
Right on, Jesse! I like your approach–to “get a better idea of how to handle my slasher nature.” I think Mars and I agree on that point, too. It’s OK to have lots of interests–it’s awesome and important, I think. But it’s also key to harness them in a way that’s helpful and that gives you an advantage. Finding interconnectedness between the slashes is the key, as you say. Thanks for your comment.
Man, when I wrote that post, I had no idea people were getting so crazy over it.
I didn’t say have one skill and make that your focus – but rather finding your “thing” – your career and making that ONE your legacy.
I do a lot of different stuff – speak and read Japanese, market, code, draw and consult – but everything is a part of the “family” – my career.
My “rant” was based on people who DO have separate careers (not skillsets) and switching without kicking ASS in at least ONE of them.
Seth Godin is diverse as hell, but his main brand and legacy will be “the epic marketer”.
The more diverse things you can combine the more creative you get – but use that for your one, ultimate career that’s in the making.
Interesting post btw
Mars! Thanks for stopping by, man. And I say congratulations for starting this shitstorm. It makes the blogosphere fun.
I think we really actually agree on a lot of things here, like the “family” of the career and having a lot of elements that work toward that. But when folks use slashes to describe themselves, it doesn’t always mean they’re separate careers. For lots of us, all those things are key to the actual “family” career, and it’s super important to name them.
I appreciate you commenting here, and I definitely look forward to reading more at your site. Thanks again!
Ahem…another slash: Steve Martin, BANJO player! Nice article here!
D’oh! How could I forget that?! For everybody’s pleasure, check it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l31MSpojWTA
First off, Baker, I totally agree with everything you wrote.
As ever, your sane, level-headed, good-humored intelligence leaves nothing for a reasonable man to quibble with.
That said, Mars has pinpointed a definite shift in the way we compose our public identities. Though I understand this shift was inevitable, given our growing tendencies to “put ourselves out there” among virtual strangers and strictly-intenet acquaintances, I must admit the proliferation of slashes concerns me.
My best analogy for the problem might be the way Ghana, by the mid-2000s, boasted the world’s most millionaires, per capita, of anywhere in the world. This, of course, was because their currency had departed from any and all standard of meaningful valuation. Bluntly stated, they had trashed their currency.
I am concerned that the slash-mania could be pushing us into similar territory.
I am downright distressed, for example, that I can’t go a solid week anymore without meeting yet another “film-maker.”
Just ten years ago, I’d made it into my mid-30s having met a mere two or three people who’d had anything to do with the making of a film. At least as far as I know. At any rate, it was a very low number.
To stick with this particular example, I have to say I had a much better feeling about “film-makers,” and a far more respect for what it meant to make a film, when I didn’t meet one every time I stepped out of the house.
I sense the currency is being trashed.
The American filmmaker is morphing into the Ghanese millionaire . . . a most unforeseeable development . . .
My takeaway: something has changed. And it’s moving at a terrific rate of acceleration.
Of course much of it has to do with how we present ourselves online. In a place where you’re liable to have contact with so many strangers, I guess there’s a natural tendency to cover more personal ground rather than less.
But that doesn’t explain it away. And it’s bled into–soaked into–our face-to-face conversation. People talk this way in restaruants now, in classrooms. At barbeques. While they’re sitting on the couch eating chips.
I have a recommended rule of thumb. Though I’m only now thinking it through and articulating it, the rule nevertheless serves to illustrate my personal tendencies on this.
Note: I am NOT suggesting anyone need to follow this as a rule, or even take it to heart.
For what it’s worth, here it is. Ask yourself:
(a) Is the activity / hobby / passion something that MILLIONS of other people do?
then
(b) If we scoured the earth, and excluded my family and personal acquaintances, could we find ANYONE AT ALL who could promptly connect my name with this activity / hobby / passion?
If I answer YES to (a), and having done that, answer NO to (b), I tend to rule against throwing that particular item into the slash-a-thon “About Me.”
What’s more, satisfying that little test may STILL not be enough, for me.
I understand that I have not addressed the central ideas of either Mars or Lawley.
But this did hit a nerve, and got me thinking.
Trumbo–outstanding stuff.
You got me thinking about how technology fits into this, too. I mean, a few years ago, was there even a forum like Twitter where you could possibly use slashes to introduce yourself? And also, even just 15 years back, it was really hard and expensive to be a filmmaker, but now you can make an entire movie with a phone. Lots of those filmmakers nowadays probably would’ve been writers or actors or something else before technology changed that to make it easy and very cheap.
I like the a. and b. introduction rubric, too. The thing about that, for me, is that the thing that people outside of our immediate circles know us for is our job, more than anything else, so that’d be what lots of people put to intro themselves. And, really, I’ve always hated that. After we ask each other, “What’s your name?” the next question is something like, “What do you do for a living?” and that is really limiting. Unless people love their jobs, it makes them be categorized as something they’re not. So, I guess I really don’t have a problem with people sharing something they love or some hobby of theirs in their intro, even if nobody knows about it. It doesn’t really matter to me if people are recognized or not for doing something they love. I’d like to know about it.
Hey Baker, thanks for the shout-out in this thought-provoking post.
My reaction to Mars’ statement was mostly to roll my eyes — yet another “expert” claiming to know what’s best for everyone.
And assuming that because I do a lot of different things that I suck at each and every one of them is just kinda stupid. If you actually check out my stuff and think it sucks, you’re welcome to your opinion. Other people have different opinions. And I just keep plugging away at mastering my various skills regardless of all of them!
I do agree that finding an underlying theme to relate one’s various skills and gifts to is probably a useful career move in a time when specialists are prized and “slashers” are misunderstood and dismissed. It just doesn’t work in all cases, though.
And ultimately, trying to mold yourself to Mars’ — or anyone’s — requirements is just not going to work.
You can’t please everybody, so you might as well please yourself.
[...] Lawley of Catfish Parade responded with this post, in which he admitted to almost changing his slasher description of himself after he read [...]
[...] at Catfish Parade also posted his reaction to a post by Mars Dorian which has created a bit of a [...]
[...] How to be More Creative by Being a Slasher [...]
[...] How to be More Creative by Being a Slasher (Catfish Parade) From Baker: “Even though my blog is still new, this post has been my most commented, retweeted, and viewed and continues to get traffic. It was a response to a post on Mars Dorian’s blog, directly challenging some of his ideas and pushing that conversation further (it even got enough buzz that Mars himself came over and commented on my post!).” [...]