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Consuming vs. Producing
If you’re an artist, focus on the latter
I’ve been gorging myself on content. It’s easy to do. How many times have we heard we need to read if we want to be writers? Am I right? But, it’s also lazy. It’s certainly easier to read another book review or New Yorker short story than it is to write one. For artists, it’s critical that we focus more on producing content than consuming it.
That ratio has gone awry for me. I’ve turned into a maniacal consumer. And I’m not even consuming well. I mean, I’m not digesting the content I’m taking in. I’m simply watching it click by like a reel that won’t stop, that in fact is going faster and faster, and frankly, it’s making me anxious, and sick. It’s shutting me down.
Somehow, I had no idea there was so much writing going on. When I got serious a few months ago about putting my love of the written word front and center, I subscribed to multiple online journals. And I began receiving to my inbox so much great writing. Essays and articles, poems and musings, on top of ubiquitous books and book reviews. Books of now and yesterday and yesteryear and yester-century. Books I should have read by now and books I should at least know about and books that are coming, that we await with bated breath.
