Audience: Me and Everyone

Quick Notes and Links:

Glamorizing the Awards Season (the Golden Globes, Oscars, etc.) makes it hard for creatives to measure their own creative success.

Every month is Black History Month and Black creatives, their histories, legacies, contributions and accomplishments will be folded into our weekly get-together on this show because it’s part of the Creative4evr mission statement.

If you want people to experience your creativity more than once, then thinking about your audience is important.

Successful creatives are very clear on who their audience is and they intentionally deliver to that audience over and over again. No one accidentally gains and maintains an audience.

Think outside of the box when it comes to making art just for yourself...you’re not really doing that anyway. You’re making art for people in your bubble, however big or small that bubble may be.

It's impossible to make art for "everyone." If you’re trying to make something that reaches everyone, that pleases everyone, your work will suffer.

Best practice: Your creative themes should be UNIVERSAL. The audience for your creativity should be TARGETED.

If you can’t figure out who your audience should be, it probably means you aren’t clear about what it is you’re wanting to create.

Finding your Audience:
1) Go back to the beginning. What is your idea and why is it important to you?
2) Gather feedback from the audience you have. Ask questions about what they enjoy/dislike, want more of.
3) Research the audiences of other people doing what you do.

Other Links:
> Three Reasons Why Your Creative Work Needs An Audience
> Eye of the Beholder: Art and its Audience
> How Authors Can Find Their Ideal Reading Audience
> How To Define Your Target Audience
> Your Target Market

Don’t forget to be creative this week. Even if you just think about it. Later.

Full Show Notes:

Hey, hi and hello! Welcome to Creative4evr. The podcast dedicated to keeping you forever inspired, forever motivated, forever creative, and forever YOU.  I am your host, Janet, a.k.a. Jai//Em, a.k.a. the voice inside your head, a.k.a. your biggest fan, and together we’re going to get some creative shit done.

Today! We’re gonna talk about audience. I am really happy to have this chat. I’ve been very excited about this episode. But first, a February check-in.

So, it’s basically the end of February, 2020 which means Awards Season is over— you know the Golden Globes, the Oscars, the SAG awards, the Independent Spirit Awards, all the awards. That’s done. We are able to put that in a box until next year. We are also knee deep in Black History Month and it is always great to see the events and marketing campaigns that happen in order to bring awareness to Black people and their important (and often overlooked) histories, legacies, contributions, and accomplishments. But I wanted to talk about two items that involve Black History Month and Awards Season just to calibrate you on how Creative4evr treats February.

So, first! Awards and events. Actor and movie awards, especially the Oscars, are always big events at this time of year. And they use to be a big event in my social circles, especially when I lived in Los Angeles. It was our Super Bowl, it was a part of being a creative living in LA. You cared about the Oscars, from what suits and dresses the actors were wearing, to the parties they went to at the end of the night.

But in 2008 I lost my enthusiasm for it. And it was because I realized that I would have these highs and lows. I would swing wildly between I am a creative genius and crippling depression. And all of this was triggered in 2008 when Diablo Cody was nominated for 4 Oscars for the movie Juno, and she won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. The whole story leading up to the Academy Awards was that she had written this script in 7 weeks in a Starbucks. Her winning really affected me because it made me think, This is the measurement, this is how it works. I should be able to write an award-winning something in 7 weeks. But of course I couldn’t do that and because I couldn’t do it, I felt like a failure. And when the awards season crept up again in 2009, all that depression and lack of confidence surfaced again. I would think, I still don’t have a something written, and another year has passed, but Diablo Cody was able to do it 7 weeks, and since I can’t do it I am a failure.

The thing I had loved so much, the time of year where we would drink, and talk trash about movies, and eat lots of food, and get dressed up sometimes, and then nobody goes to work on Monday… I started to hate that time of year. I started to feel like the only way I could WIN that weekend was if I sat down and wrote on that day, instead of enjoying the festivities. It was almost like I was punishing myself. I don’t have what these people have, I’m not winning these awards because I am not working hard enough so on that day I’m gonna work really, really hard. And I would write or do whatever it was to be a better creative person on that day instead of participating in the Oscars.

Now, years later I’ve leveled out. I don’t participate in the awards season, but I don’t hate it with a passion either. Because I don’t think hating the Oscars is the healthy alternative. I think it was important for me to stop consciously or subconsciously using the award show to measure my own success. I didn’t realize I was doing that, I didn’t realize that when I made a big to-do and fuss about the Oscars and celebrating that weekend, I was actually just glamorizing the award show in a way that was unhealthy for me. So in an effort to keep our eyes on the things that accurately measure our success, we won’t do any award season hubbub here. And that goes for book award season and any other franchise or community that builds hype around giving out awards to creatives. We WILL mention worthy accolades when talking about someone or a piece of work, but we will not be in the business of glamorizing the very idea of awarding creative people. It doesn’t do our psyches any good, it doesn’t do our creativity any good, and it gets in the way of each of us deciding how we want to measure our own creative success, because there are a hundred-million ways to measure creative success and that’s a topic we will cover at a later date.

Alright, the 2nd thing you should know about February and the Creative4evr podcast. As I said, February is Black History Month— but, and some of you can guess what I’m about to say. Every month is Black History Month as far I am concerned. We will be talking about Black people often on this show, it’s one of my goals for the podcast and yeah, it’s gonna happen. Now, please understand that I do participate in Black History Month. And you should too. I just want you to know that here on the podcast we will not have a BHM book reading or a special episode brought to you by BHM where we are calling things out just because it’s Feb. Black creatives, their histories, legacies, contributions and accomplishments will be folded into our weekly get-together on this show because it’s part of the Creative4evr mission statement. If you haven’t heard our mission statement, please check out our v...