Craft Wants Your Sweat. Art Wants Your Blood.

Yesterday, Tananarive and I had our best “Hollywood” day in a very long time. Three very serious interactions with people who are trying to make us money…I mean, are very interested in scripts we’ve written over the last ten months, as well as finally boiling down a television series proposal for a “blind script” deal we’re engaged with.

Betwixt the two of us, this is in addition to raising a son, teaching college, traveling to promote T’s documentary HORROR NOIR, editing the sequel to LEGACY OF HEOROT (titled STARBORN AND GODSONS, due out next year), working on my next collaboration with Larry (currently titled COLLABORATOR), T burning on her next novel, and planning the next script, possibly called TRAVELER. We’ll see.

The temptation to be over the moon is very strong. But if you let your emotions swing too high, when the inevitable disappointments occur they can be devastating. But if you DON’T invest your emotions, you don’t have the power you need to create, or even more, to engage with other creative people. It can be SO seductive to just fall into the embrace of the “we LOVE your work. We’re BIG fans. I’m SUPER-EXCITED to be working with you” thingie.

To understand why this is so hard, we have to start with a definition of “Art”, and I will follow this line of thought understanding that my definitions are not an academic’s. It is drawn from a pan-cultural and pan-disciplinary study of these things. I wasn’t interested in CRITICISM, I was interested in CREATION and teaching…