'The Shipwreck' by Claude-Joseph Vernet (1772)
Today I’m going to explain why I feel optimistic as an artist working in 2024, despite all the economic and technological forces conspiring against us. I hope it’ll inspire you a little.
First: a change of format!
I’m feeling a little disconnected from you all at the moment. This newsletter has evolved over the years: At times it’s tried to be useful or instructive; at other times it’s been deeply personal. New readers join every week and I guess I feel out of touch with what you’d like to read from me.
So to bring us closer together, I’d like to propose a new format: Q&A!
I’m inviting you to ask me a question and I will publish a carefully considered reply in a forthcoming letter. You can ask me anything, but for example:
- you can ask me specific questions about my graphic novel writing process;
- you could ask me for advice about storytelling, drawing or filmmaking;
- you might want to know more about my journalism at The New York Times;
- maybe you want to know more about publishing newsletters, making YouTube videos or building simple websites;
- you can ask me about my life outside of work, my hobbies, interests and tastes, if you dare;
- or what I think about X, Y or Z going on in the world.
My hope is that by asking me a question, you’ll get more of what you want from The Third Something. Meanwhile, your questions will act like a lighthouse in the night fog, directing me towards you and your interests.
Together, we’ll reshape this newsletter once again!
How to ask a question
I’ve made a special page for you to send your questions!
You can also just hit ‘reply’ to any of my newsletters in your inbox. Don’t forget to tell me your first name and where in the world you are writing from.
I can’t wait to read your questions!
🌅
Finding hope in hard times
This change in format was inspired by a question I received a couple of weeks ago that I felt compelled to reply to:
I’m trying to be a writer and I’m really struggling to stay positive. Everywhere I look, it seems there’s more bad news. Whenever I go on social media all I see is writers complaining about how few books they sold or how they can’t get a publishing deal or if they do how bad the money is. I find AI really depressing. I feel like there was a window of opportunity for writers and that’s slammed shut. You’re writing your graphic novel and you seem (to me) to be much more positive. Are you? Why?
— Saffron
Dear Saffron,
Yes, things are bad in arts and entertainment, aren’t they. I think it’s worth sitting with just how bad it is, as difficult as that may be. It’s important to be clear-eyed about the problem.
We’re trapped in a Bermuda Triangle of sorts, pinned in by three crises.
Firstly, the traditional/legacy industries are shrinking. In film, television, music, publishing — even high end art! — there’s simply less money. The appetite for risk-taking has all but vanished and so these legacy businesses put their money behind safe bets: celebrities who want to write murder mysteries, film franchises that have a track record.
This consolidation is great for established celebrities and superheroes, but bad for artists like you and me who want to introduce original stories into the culture — and who need our talent nurtured. The careers of 20th Century icons like Cormac McCarthy and David Bowie are simply impossible today.
We are already seeing the consequences of this contraction. Fewer opportunities for new talent and fiercer competition (and lower rewards) for those opportunities. The creative industries are becoming crowded with nepobabies and the privately educated who use their wealth and influence to skip the queue.
The arts are devolving into an 18th century aristocracy.
This all maybe be part of the never-ending ebb-and-flow of media, or it may be permanent. I don’t know.
(Keep reading, I promise it gets more positive soon…)
Secondly, the ecosystem that was supposed to be an alternative has effectively failed. Social media made an implicit promise to us: ‘you make content for free, and we’ll put it in front of your fans.’ For a good while there it seemed like we could build sustainable careers outside of legacy media. But following a path laid out by TikTok, the major platforms have all tweaked their algorithms to disconnect follower count from views. Patreon founder Jack Conte explains it really well in this SXSW keynote and this series by Storythings goes into more depth.
Today, the number of followers you have bears little influence on how many people will watch your video, see your Instagram post or listen to your song. You might have noticed your Instagram/X/Threads feeds filling up with more bizarre content and ads, squeezing out updates from people you chose to follow. This is all part of that change.
It’s a brutal blow for artists, many of whom pushed themselves to burnout to meet the capricious demands of the platforms while trying to practice their art.
In this conversation, Ezra Klein and Nilay Patel of The Verge agree ‘Distribution is the problem to solve’ — we need to find a new way to connect artists with audiences that isn’t based on a toxic advertising model. Until distribution is solved, I would consider social media a dead end.
(Seriously though, keep reading!)
Thirdly, artificial intelligence, which doesn’t even need a sub-clause.
It’s too early to know how much harm A.I. will do to artists, our processes, our rights and our incomes, but in the short term, it doesn’t look good.
I do hold out hope that in the medium term and beyond, saturation by machine-made content will prompt a second Romantic movement, led by artists who drive deeper into their own humanity to bring forth art that is more personal and soul-enriching than much content created today.
But I think the reason so many artists feel caught with their pants down by A.I. is they’ve spent the last ten years doing the opposite: making stock content to feed an algorithm. We know where we need to go, but we’ve travelled in the opposite direction.
So Saffron, I understand why you’re struggling to stay positive and I write that bleak summary because I think it’s important to sit with the feelings and acknowledge the struggle.
One of those feelings might be grief.
And yet, in the heart of this Bermuda Triangle, you, me and many others wake up every day to write, draw, paint, make music and so on. And you’re right, I find myself writing my book with enthusiasm and hope. As I’ve thought about your question, I’ve tried to pin down where this optimism comes from, times being what they are (hard and getting harder all the time).
The last five years have taught me that I must write, draw or do something creative every day or, inevitably, I become depressed. Working away on fiction is essential to my mental health and I think it’s fair to say that artists tend to be people who can’t not create. We channel our energies into these quixotic endeavours because, simply, the alternative is worse. We create, because we must.
But if I dig deeper, there’s a second force putting my hand to paper every morning, simply: I love stories.
I love reading and watching them, but most of all, I love making them up. Since I was at least six years old, stories have been how I’ve processed my feelings, how I’ve expressed them. My head is full of the buggers, and the more stories I tell, the more space I open up for new ones.
I also believe deeply that stories are essential for our collective humanity and that a culture is only as good as the stories it tells itself.
Robert McKee once said “when the storytelling goes bad in a society, the result is decadence.” Maybe you can feel it too, Saffron, but we live in decadent times.
People are hungry for new, great stories — we’re desperate for them. The world is a maelstrom; it’s never spun so fast and we’re all lost at sea. There’s that lighthouse metaphor again: we’re clinging to our pathetic life-jackets, pleading for stories to show us the way; to lead us safely to shore, to say: this is how to live in these unfathomable times. Trust me, as someone who explains and argues the world for his day job: a video explainer or feature article has got nothing on an honest-to-God made-up story.
Film, television, social media, A.I., they’re just technology and technology must always rise and fall. But stories do not die.
So Saffron, please give yourself the time to grieve for the world we’ve lost, for the opportunities we thought we’d have.
And then pick up your pen and start writing, because there’s a new world that needs building and we’re going to build it with our stories.
Until another Sunday soon,
