As a creator, I hope you aren’t in similar dire straits:
- a minus zero budget
- no promise of funding
- inadequate equipment or setup for production
- not enough hours in the day for seriously pursuing the dream
- can’t qualify for “monetization” due to a snail’s pace of new followers
- supportive commenters suddenly drift away with no polite goodbyes
- so-called friends drop away when you dare to express your frustrations
- leaky viewer/listener retention
- potential collaborators break promises or outright ghost you
In the face of all these challenges (and more), during free moments over the last 2 years I’ve somehow yet filmed over 200 episodes and recorded over 70 theme tunes for my horror-comedy web series Grave Mood Rings, and the production goes on. There’s likely no one formula for staying motivated, since no two creator situations are exactly the same. But compare what I’ve been up against with your own scenario, and see if any of my coping strategies might be applicable.
Key players dropping out: Past script writers for Grave Mood Rings have retired themselves, but I couldn’t let that kill my momentum, so I made the conscious decision to feel freer. I had to choose to flip the negatives into positives, so instead of being left in a lurch, I manifested heightened creativity in their absence. Sure, there was disillusionment and dismay to process, but I could also celebrate saying “good riddance” to those who weren’t, at the end of the day, genuine supporters of the project. They may have dallied with the idea, they may have contributed according to their own comfort levels, but they ultimately got left behind because they simply weren’t running fast enough. The thing is, art takes on its own impetus. My show may seem like my “baby” that I nurture, but babies develop according to their own natures. I have to keep running, too, to see where the project is going. Sure, I try to steer things, but it would be delusional for any creator to feel in total control of a work of art.
Headaches of collaboration: Collaboration has been the lifeblood of my show. I could work in a vacuum, shooting hoops by myself in my own driveway, as it were, but that feels too lonely. Grave Mood Rings isn’t an egotistic pet project, and I’d much rather showcase additional talents by making the show a game with multiple players or (since I don’t really know sports metaphors) a soup improved by lots of interesting spices. To date, the show has featured 40 guests. But, oh, the headaches involved! There have been uncountable collaborators who never responded to queries, who made false promises (sometimes repeatedly!), who had enough time to type out complex excuses in the time it would have taken to film the 10-second clip for the show, and those who did in fact follow through but took a year to deliver. Project management could be a full-time job in itself, for without follow-ups and cajoling, disappointment is all but guaranteed. It’s fascinating to see just how precious people can be with their time and supportiveness. No judgement (well, maybe some!).
Money issues: Dealing with a zero budget can lead to greater innovations, so I actually embrace not being funded (though, let’s face it, I wouldn’t turn down money if it were ever offered). Incrementally over 2 years, I have spent $1000 on props, costumes, and a green screen. The phone’s camera and the tripod I already had. A family member has gifted me an occasional prop, wig, and even the costume for a haunted tree character. A co-writer who fired himself bought a branded t-shirt we needed for a particular theme, but that apparently drained his entire fund for investing in our production. I haven’t factored what my time has been worth over the course of producing 200+ episodes. The editing alone averages to 8 hours per 3 minutes of completed footage, and work on pre-production easily doubles that. My partner, who plays all the characters except for my own Prof. Oddfellow, takes time away from his paying job to complete the post-production, and I haven’t tallied the money he’d technically be owed for over 2,000 hours should we ever secure funding. We’re both dedicating our time and our own money to make Grave Mood Rings happen, and we’re the only ones doing that because we’re the only ones who believe in the show enough to do that. All the boo-hoo-hoos aside, it’s actually pretty cool because it puts us in a class of our own. We’d prefer to be who we are than to trade places with anybody who has let us down or let us go along the way.
The numbers game of stats and followers: Here’s something that ought to adjust one’s attitude. The digital marketing company Chaotic Good’s founders said the following in a Billboard interview: “Everything on the internet is fake. … It’s an open secret in the music industry that all the numbers—play counts, followers, stats—are fake or at least obfuscated. … Bots and ‘streaming farms’ have become a marketing expense.” So this is a great reminder not to compare our own apparent success to other people’s. We can’t even trust the numbers on our own stats, since the powers that be not only inflate the “success” of artists being pushed on the public but also deflate the stats of those in obscurity. It’s a terrible situation, and it would be great if we could really know just how many people are ever seeing or hearing what we create, but for the time being we must be content with working in something of a gaping void. Like tossing messages in bottles into the sea, we must maintain a bit of blind hopefulness, since the current state of the internet does not allow us to know much if anything about our audience share. By the way, here’s a little laugh: my creations aren’t even followed by bots! I watch my follower counts very carefully, and I can track almost every single one of them because they are each the result of painstaking direct marketing. I spend hours every day searching for people who might be interested in what I’m doing, for me to reach out to. This is an excruciatingly difficult and too-often unsatisfactory process, especially when hard-won new viewers end up dropping away over time. If and when I discover the secret of retaining a loyal audience, I will share it gladly.
Bottom line: I admit to being an artistic failure at: making money, keeping colleagues, and maintaining followings. But I’m a winner at not letting the setbacks defeat me or slow down my productivity. When I don’t dare to buy another prop, I craft my own out of whatever trash is lying about (best or worst example: a stethoscope fashioned out of scrap paper). When a scriptwriter fails me, I write my own. When my partner has no free time to film or edit, I research future possible collaborations and channels to keep the momentum. My goal is to write and film 3 new episodes each week; sometimes it’s just 1 episode, which is still okay. It all seems to come down to a decision or an intention: keep going anyway, undistracted by so-called setbacks. Losing two co-writers ended up breathing new life in the series, so we can’t ever judge stumbling blocks as they occur since we can’t know where they’ll end up leading us. A very supportive horror host just said: “[Grave Mood Rings] has always been good, but it seems like since that one writer dropped you, you’ve just really spread your wings. Like a phoenix! Kudos coming out of a difficult situation and making it better.”
Onward and upward!
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