Advice for Being An Independent Artist

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of speaking at a class at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. During one portion of this talk, I gave some words of advice about making a living as an independent artist. Here they are in case they are helpful to anyone else:

1. You don't need to know everything
Artists can tend to be perfectionists, and as such, we can be very hard on ourselves when we come face-to-face with our own ignorance. We can feel this pressure that we should arrive "pre-arrived," as if there is no incubating period for coming into one's own. But this kind of thinking is counter-intuitive to the artistic process, which is often rife with not knowing. We should be curious, free, and ever in a spirit of learning. There is also much value in learning to depend on others for help. If you don't know how to make a website or manage a budget or create a production schedule, find friends or hire people who do! It's not all on you to do everything.

2. Get to know yourself
While you may not need to know everything, one thing that will help the very core of your artistry is knowing yourself. This is a lifelong journey, so I've modified the traditional "Know yourself" into "Get to know yourself." No one finishes college knowing completely who they are. And we are always evolving throughout our lifetime, so getting to know ourselves is never over. The power that comes with getting to know yourself is manyfold. You will learn what your values are. You will define success on your own terms. You will know what to say "No" to. Your voice will automatically emerge from your artistry, because your identity will be expressed without your working to make it so.

3. Think of yourself as an artist
Some people don't need this advice. They know they are artists, and always have known. But for everyone else, we often wonder if we qualify for the title "artist" (or "writer," or "dancer," or "filmmaker," etc). But at what point do you get to earn that title? When you get your degree? When you get your first commission? First production? First review? The fact is, there may always be some reason to think you aren't worthy of the title. But I think this is a classic case of "Fake it till you make it" being true. Unless you allow yourself to own the title of artist, you'll always be wondering if you're good enough, if you've made it. Think of yourself as an artist, put in the work, and one day you'll find that the title suits you just fine.

4. Think of yourself as a business
This might sound slimy, but if you want to make money with your art, you are a business. If it's any help, instead of thinking of it as selling a product, try thinking of it as meeting a need. Broadly speaking, the world needs art, music, stories. If we didn't believe that, we wouldn't be pursuing careers in the arts. So, we are here to help meet that need! I believe thinking of yourself as a business is really about protecting yourself from those who will take advantage of you. There will be people who want to take and take and take from you for free or far less than what your dignity is worth. Shoring yourself up with good business practices isn't slimy; it's self-care. Learn a bit about the legal, financial, and marketing sides of business - or find people who are good at those things and hire them to help you run your business. When those things are in order, you will be freed up to pursue your artistic whim without worry.

Recording is a Team Effort

Just a handful of the amazing individuals who are helping turn this album dream into reality!

I spent the past weekend at 25th Street Recording in Oakland with the Four Immigrants cast, musicians and creative team to record the original cast album for the show*. To be honest, going into the weekend, I was feeling fairly anxious. I have recorded two cast albums before, and both of them demanded so much time and attention that my impression of the recording process was that it was always mentally draining. So, I braced myself for a similar experience this time. I'm delighted to say that, while the recording sessions were definitely still demanding, the entire process actually went very smoothly and with minimal hiccups.

It was immediately clear to me that this was because I had such a great team of people around me. We were fortunate not only to have the entire cast back, but each musician in our 6-person ensemble had played in the pit for the show as well! This enabled us to jump right back into the material even after almost half a year had passed since the last time we performed it. Perhaps the biggest help was that I had a team of people to help take on some of the administrative and decision-making roles. For my past albums, I wore the hats of producer, manager, and music director combined. For The Four Immigrants, we split up these responsibilities among five people, and, by doing so, were able to keep things focused, organized and on track. This made a world of difference. Having a team of people you trust. Working with them and leaning on them. This sense of relying on others to help us get through to the end is, interestingly enough, one of the major themes in the show as well. I'm so grateful to all of the individuals who lent their skills, talent, time, and funds to this project. I wouldn't be able to do it alone.

*We are still trying to raise funds to help with the final production and distribution costs of the album. If you would like to make a donation, click here.

Playwright as Arranger

The process of writing the stage adaptation of Inside Out & Back Again has been a unique challenge for me as a playwright. Thanhha Lai's book uses a series of poems to tell the story of Hà and her family. In early discussions with Bay Area Children's Theatre, we decided Lai's poetry was so beautiful and vivid that we didn't feel it necessary to create new text for the stage version. All of the spoken words (with only a handful of exceptions) in the play are taken directly from Lai's text.

My role in creating the play could be likened to that of an arranger of music, taking what already exists and re-organizing it to suit the needs of a play. In order to create my first draft, I typed the entirety of Lai's book word-for-word into a document I called "Source." When I decided which portions of Lai's text to include in the play, I would cut it from the "Source" document and paste it into my script document. I did this to keep track of which segments of the book I had already used, so as not to repeat myself in the script. I have cut, spliced, re-ordered, and re-contextualized the original poetry to try and create a version of the story that plays out well on-stage.

Some slight word modifications have been made. Since I wanted to avoid the feel of an overly long monologue from Hà's perspective, portions of text have been given to other characters in the story. Things like pronouns and verb tenses had to be changed to accommodate these different voices. But for the most part, any new text that I do contribute to the story comes in the form of stage directions – describing setting, gestures, reactions, visual cues to help accentuate and potentially convey more than what words might allow.

This method of building a script has had both its limitations and advantages. On one hand, sometimes I have wanted the poetry to provide words that it simply did not, and I've needed to find creative solutions to those problems by either re-contextualizing what is there, or by trying to go about it without words.  On the other hand, I have not had the problem of typical "writer's block," where you must generate words yourself, but can't seem to find them. In this case, all the words are there, and it's up to me to place them where I need them.

The result will hopefully be a piece that highlights Lai's beautiful poetry unpacked and opened up in a stage experience that will transport the audience along with Hà and her family.

The Struggle of Open-Endedness

When I have a production, a workshop, even a meeting to look forward to, I usually find it very easy to focus and get work done. There is a built-in accountability to knowing that others are counting on me delivering something so that further development of a new work/play can begin. However, when I'm in between deadlines, it's a lot harder to find that fire and drive to get the creative wheels turning.

I find myself in such a phase right now. For Inside Out & Back Again, a play which has a definite deadline (it opens in March 2018), the script has been rewritten and brought to a place where the creative teams agrees it's ready for a workshop - which will begin this weekend. All of my other projects don't have deadlines yet. So while I could and should be working on them, it's easy to find myself within a fog of distraction.

To be fair, some of these projects need some time in this amorphous state where they exist primarily in my brain, and are worked and re-worked away from a laptop or notebook. Some of them require research and cogitation before I attempt to create something that even looks like a script. I try to remember this, so I don't feel discouraged by the fact that I might not be "producing" something. Still, structure is good for me. So, I remind myself that there are deadlines on the horizon, even though they may feel far away, or even if I don't see them yet. So, working backwards from those larger deadlines, I try to create mini-deadlines that will help me progress. I have also started to participate in a silent writing group, where I meet with fellow playwrights to stay quiet and just write (or read or research, as the need may be). I find these times to be helpful for focusing because it's harder for the fog of distraction to take hold when I'm out of the house and around others.

I share this because it's so easy to look at the big markers of playwriting and marvel at the world premieres, the workshops, the readings. But, being a playwright is as much about these days/weeks/months of open-endedness, from which they must forge and fashion a pattern and routine that works for themselves - much like the act of writing a play.

Creativity Quotation #23

"Once again the only thing that mattered was the work, except now he realized that the work was him. There is no separating yourself from the things you make, he thought. If you are a cesspool, what else can your work be except shit?" - Noah Hawley, Before the Fall