At some point in the career of every artist, literally no one is listening. There is no audience waiting to appreciate your work.
People don’t notice things right away. And these days, people have trouble noticing anything at all. People are exhausted from information overload. Everyone everywhere is dumping information down everyone else’s throats constantly. It’s harder than ever to capture a focused audience. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s everybody’s fault. That’s the way it be.
In fact, you’re probably considering clicking out of this post even now, because your head is a flurry of other possibilities. You could be scrolling through socials. You could be watching funny ferret compilations on YouTube. You could even be doing something offline, but you might not be able to think of anything like that right now.
What you should be doing is working on one of your many creative projects. But there’s a chance you’ve been avoiding them lately. Because you’re discouraged.
Because you feel invisible and ignored.
But the truth is, the world has the memory of a goldfish. If you’re quiet for a day or two, most people will forget your work exists, and you’ll be back where you are now. You’ll always come back here, to the loneliness of your creative mind, to a world only you can see. You want to bring other people to this world. Of course, you do. But why the hurry?
The Anxiety of Starting at Zero
It’s hard to start anything when you aren’t sure you’ll ever have anyone willing to support what you do. It’s hard to create when you’re not sure if anyone will ever appreciate what you produce. But you have to be willing to throw your bread on the water.
I’m writing this post long before I intend to publish it. In fact, as I’m sitting here at my desk, listening to the crisp September wind and the birds and the soft notes of the windchime in the garden below, this blog, as you see it now, does not exist. I have no followers. I have no email list. I have less than 150 followers on Instagram and no followers on Pinterest.
I don’t know who will come or when. But you’re here now.
That proves that—in this noisy overcrowded world—people somehow find each other. If you found me, someone will find you.
What to Do in the Meantime
But at the end of the day, you have to find some other motivation besides likes, pageviews, comments or applause. You have to love your work and enjoy progress that has nothing to do with follower numbers. There’s so much you can do with no audience at all.
Here are some things you might want to focus on while you’re languishing in obscurity:
Practice, self-critique, and make plans to improve
Let’s make something clear: whether or not you have fans and followers has nothing to do with your skill-level. I’m definitely not implying that you don’t have an audience because you’re not good enough. There’s apparently no correlation, there.
But one of the very best uses of your time when nobody’s expecting you to perform for them is to focus on improving. Put some serious time into practicing, finding the areas you would like to strengthen and leveling up. Whatever this looks like for your particular art form, it will definitely be worth your time.
Research
Ha. Here it is—my favorite form of procrastination. Especially when enabled by Pinterest, I spend tons of time researching my craft. I’m always hunting down any scrap of information on fiction writing, art, blogging, etc. searching for anything I might have missed that turn out to be magic for me.
Of course, this can get a little out of control. It definitely does for me, sometimes. But if you figure out how to stay focused and pay attention to how much time is passing, research is a great way to make use of your obscurity. You might not have as much time to do it when you have an impatient audience waiting for you to produce something amazing all the time.
Find your voice/style
Another great thing to work on when nobody’s watching is developing your voice or your style. It’s kind of like what they tell people who are all impatient to get a significant other. Why don’t you stop worrying about looking for somebody else and see if you can find yourself? Who are you, as a creator? What matters to you? How do you want to express yourself?
This is going to take some experimentation. Play around with your genera, your tone, your media and techniques. You have no audience to worry about confusing, so you’re free to do whatever you want. There are no expectations. No one’s there to walk away if you completely weird them out. This is about the relationship between you and your work. Worry about that first.
Try crazy things
This is closely related to the above. Now is the time to try stuff you might not want to try in front of a thousand, or ten-thousand followers. Don’t hold back launching or publishing something until you’ve got x-amount of subscribers. Do it now. Get some experience while it’s still safe to flop.
Get started on a big weird project you may or may not actually finish. Try to write a novel in two weeks. Paint an eight-by-six foot self-portrait. Form a garage-band and go around performing in every garage that will let you in. Have some fun and don’t take your work too seriously. Besides, you’re going to have some funny stories to tell when you’re all grown-up and respectable, later.
Make a bucket list
You know, I’m glad I thought of the dating analogy, because I think that successfully reframed the situation for myself. I really like being single but I whine a lot about my lack of audience. But hey, this is the fun part. There’s freedom in obscurity. Make a bucket list. (This is kind of random. I just like bucket lists, okay?)
But really, do it. Make a bucket list of things you’d like to do in your creative life that have nothing to do with whether anybody appreciates them or not. Fill a sketchbook in a certain amount of time. Write a short-story a day for a week. Record an album where you cover a pop song from every decade from the past century. Recreate a classic novel in comic-book form using only cutouts from modern magazines. (That actually sounds awesome. Somebody needs to do that one.)
Here’s the point: It’s not all about the audience. You’re doing what you do because you enjoy it. As important as it is for artists to be heard and move other human hearts with their work, that’s not all we do. We have different seasons in our creative journeys. Sometimes, it’s just us and our art.
And that’s cool, too.
But don’t give up on your future audience. Keep putting in the work, and you’ll eventually reach them. It could be months from now, or years, but you get closer every day. Keep creating, everybody.