Creators vs Consumers

Choosing to be a writer feels like watching your pal Sisyphus attempting to roll his boulder up the mountain. You see him fail several times and instead of shaking your head and leaving, you pat him on his much-more-muscular-than-yours back and willingly trade places with him. You struggle with rolling the proverbial writer’s boulder because it’s what you do – your “being” as I mentioned in a previous post.

You have that idea, that drive to create (boulder) and you can see the finished product (the top of the hill) twinkling before you, egging you on. So you push and push.

“You’re almost there,” the boulder says, “just a few more months of world building, just a few more weeks of writing, just a few more revisions. You can do this.”

And then, inevitably, you lose strength and that boulder rolls back down the hill. But do writers quit? Never. If they did, they’d revert to their pre-evolutionary state, climb back into the muck of the primordial ooze and transform once again into baristas, or clerks, or in my case a teacher. It’s ironic that I’m writing this on Labor Day. Ole Sisyphus would get a kick out of that. The struggle that we writers endure begs the question, why endure the challenge?

Before I answer, I’d first make note that I finished my first novel. It totalled 70,000 words and had a beginning and an end. It still needs to be edited and reviewed by readers, so I guess you could say I threw that stone off the wagon and left it in the dust. But I’m calling it finished and I’m proud to have project 1 complete. This stone is a reflection of my growth as a writer, yet I am leaving it unedited and unpublished because I can do better, so much better. 

So why endure the challenge? Why ride that wagon and leave stones along the road? The answer is that there are only two types of people in this world, consumers and creators – I don’t want to die a consumer.

You see, consumers consume. They read books, watch sports, binge Netflix shows, stay up late playing video games with their friends. Some consumers spend money on clothes and enjoy a day of shopping. Others go to bars and consume nights of chatting with their friends over cheap beer or overpriced cocktails. Consumers spend their time using other people’s creations.

And the world wants consumers. The world begs for more, pleads that you and I will lay on the couch and tick that show’s viewership up by one. Our society is built on the backs of consumption and the top of the hierarchy are people so wealthy, they don’t have to create to survive. 

The ironic part about life is that we must all be consumers to a certain degree. I enjoy a good movie. I’d be depressed if I never saw friends. I relish the chance to eat a good meal at a nice restaurant. And yes, sometimes, I come home from a hard day at work and I just want to switch off the noggin and play some video games or watch some Netflix. We are all consumers, but not all of us are creators. Most importantly, we will all die consumers or creators. 

Fact: you don’t have to be Elon Musk to create. Read Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act and you’ll see that a lot of people are creators (he might even argue that my definitions are too definitive and don’t allow for more gray area). For the purposes of my personal philosophy, creators make things. Examples include Youtube content, music, crochet trinkets, gardening, and woodworking. These people devote some part of their life to the creation of something new and unique. They use their life to create and it's important to see my life, even my day, within this spectrum. By viewing life as a consumer or a creator, I can ask myself the hard questions, “what was I today?” 

Many people say they don’t have time for some aspect of their life: “I just can’t find the time to knit.” Yet, if they were to see their life as either a consumer or creator, I imagine they’d notice all the time they spend consuming, when part of that time could be used to further their creations. I realized that after a long day’s work, all I wanted to do was relax. In essence, I recognized that I wasn’t in a mind to create, but to consume. Faced with the issue that beleagers every creator, how does one make the time, I decided to make drastic changes to my lifestyle. I now wake up at 5:30-6 am and write until 7:30 am. I believe this is the difference between a consumer and creator – creators must make the effort. At the very least, It’s what I’ve discovered works for me. A creator makes the time. The question that we all must ask ourselves is, “are we a consumer or a creator?” If you’re a creator, how are you protecting your creative time?

So why be a creator if the path of least resistance is to adopt what the world wants, a consumer’s role? Creators break the chain. Creators put the world to work for them. They have a drive, a passion, and an objective with their life – simply put, a purpose. The path of the creator might be more difficult. There will be more failures for the creator than for the consumer, but there will be more successes as well. And for a few creators, people may even begin consuming your work. Suddenly, in an instant, you’ll find that the world, our society and system, is at work for you, rather than against you. And in that moment, you’ll breathe a sigh of relief, and you’ll keep creating, because it’s who you are, and you can’t imagine being anything else. Am I guilty for wanting to be on the other side of the consumer-creator cycle?

In my creative process I’m at the beginning of a new cycle, worldbuilding for Project 2. This is an exciting time when everything seems possible, but it is a dangerous time, filled with pitfalls and traps. One wrong step could plunge the entire endeavor into development hell. I know this from Project 1. I know the dangers. I’ve steeled myself for this moment, having spent a good portion of summer reading fantasy books and becoming a better writer. Most importantly, I finished Project 1. Now I know the process. I know what works and I know what doesn’t. I know what I need to be successful and I know where my deficiencies lie. Finishing Project 1 has been good training. Finishing a novel from start to finish is a triumph in and of itself – and most importantly, I’ve studied, taken notes, and learned from the darned thing. After a month of not writing, of not creating, I think I may be going a little insane. And so, I’ll tap Sisyphus on the shoulder once again and ask to take over for a while because I’m here to create, to be, and to write, so that when I die, I will know that I left a legacy that others might enjoy.