If This Is Anyone But Steve Allen, You’re Stealing My Bit
Cue the public-service-announcement music, folks, ’cause this is one to grow on.
In the last few days, I’ve sent some work out into the world hoping to get some commentary on it, even though I know better than to count on that. It’s just sitting there, with no evidence that anyone has read the material at all.
In the meantime, the character of Gabe at Penny Arcade just recently got some awesome shout outs from people whose work I respect — people whose shout outs I’d want — for this thing he’s been doing with his D&D campaign… and it’s the same thing I had planned to put out as a PDF product back in August, before I was convinced that (a) nobody would care about it, and (b) the third-party D&D market wasn’t healthy enough to get into. (I founded a company, you might recall, to publish such materials, and then a lot of new information came out revealing just how bad the marketplace was.)
The way my brain works when it’s feeling low, this was evidence that I was fucked. Nobody gave a shit about the thing I thought was cool, but everyone dug this idea just like one that I had put into playtesting and then let drift away, months ago, when it was put forth casually by someone else.
I got frustrated. Then I wised the fuck up.
Truth is, even if I had come out with my idea early on, I don’t have the exposure that Gabe and Penny Arcade have. Even if I had turned the idea into a solid-gold product, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the props that Gabe did — I might have gotten props, but not the same ones from the same folks, because I’m too small and my little publishing start-up wouldn’t have the attention of Internet tastemakers anyway. In other words, Gabe hasn’t taken anything from me.
I wanted to say that Gabe was stealing my bit, beating me to the score by posting in a blog entry what I intended to release as a modest product. If I release it now (where “now” equals “in weeks, when it could be done”), I might look like a poser, yoinking his idea.
That’s partly right.
I might well look like a poser if I go ahead with my product, but Gabe didn’t take anything from me. First of all, props and shout outs are not a limited resource — retweets are cheap. The ones Gabe got for his blog post? They weren’t coming to me anyway, in part because I don’t have Penny Arcade’s audience (so they weren’t going to be reading and praising me anyway) and in part because I didn’t go ahead with the project.
That’s right, the second part of the argument is ugly truth: It’s my fault.
I didn’t believe in my product and I didn’t put it out there. I could’ve had a months-long lead on Gabe’s post. I could’ve been positioned to say, “If you like that, have a look at this PDF product of mine.” I could’ve beaten Gabe to the punch.
What would that have been worth? Here’s the rub: probably not a lot. I don’t have much of a network connection to Gabe’s audience, so it’s unlikely that a parallel blog post from Gabe would’ve yielded exposure for me anyway. So, again, I’m not really out anything except self-esteem. (Deeper in debt, there.) Whatever frustration I feel is my own fault, for not putting out the product — even if I had good reasons not to, that’s a whole other issue — and it’s on me to let that frustration go.
Which was easy to do once I remembered that first part of my argument: Props are cheap. If you want to get props from readers, you have to put the work out there. Obvious, right? Big and plain to see as any mountain, but easy to miss if you’re looking down. (Say, at your navel.) And if the props don’t come, the only thing to do is to put more, better work out there. Check your bearings and get back to work.
For now I must comfort myself with the soothing notion that the idea, apparently, was good. I can tell because I can see people I respect praising the idea, even if their praise isn’t pointed at me. That’s something, I guess. That’s a lesson, and lessons seldom come free.
And knowing is half the some damn thing.
You must must must believe in your work, and you can’t wait until you’re backed in a corner to put it out there.
Excellent lesson, Will. I have a lot of the same feelings sometimes. There’s just not enough time in the world to pursue all the great ideas — even just the ones you really believe in. Then someone else follows the same line of thought you did, and that ol’ yoink feelin’ comes up again.
Some part of your work will make it out though. That’s a win, right?
Apple has proven many times over that it’s not about landing the first punch, it’s about landing the most effective punch, and that’s ultimately a judgement for the audience to make.
At the end of the day, obscurity is a choice.
My retweets actually cost like, $200.00 a pop.
I wouldn’t call that cheap.
By the way, you haven’t responded yet to my invoice. I’ll send another. Duct taped to a Kodiak bear.
– c.
It’s like you’re plucking the thoughts from my brain!
More seriously, I think you’re definitely hitting on a creative class zeitgeist with this post. Once upon a time, writers, musicians, journalists, etc. focused most of their energy on figuring out how to jam their foot in the door of whoever was in control of their industry. It wasn’t exactly fair, and I think we’re realizing that more and more. It seems like every day there’s someone who was basically ignored (or would have been ignored) by the top dogs in their industry – and who’s suddenly found success by marketing themselves online. But it was a lot simpler in many ways because there was only that one road to success.
We’ve been given a lot more choice and power to make our own roads. But I find that a lot of creative people, myself included, are absolute dunces when it comes to promoting themselves. It’s just such a different skill set. And there’s this old world thinking that persists, telling us that our work should speak for itself. Well, the sad fact is that along with all this newfound power to publish ourselves, we now have the responsibility of convincing people we’re worth listening to. The good news is that everyone’s in the same boat. Big media is having just as tough a time trying to figure it all out. The bad news is that since no one really knows what’s going on, we all have to figure it out on our own.
Curiously, I let my belief in the work waver because of very good evidence that it wouldn’t sell. What I’m remembering today is that this particular product still probably doesn’t have the audience to necessarily warrant the time it would take to do the product well. I might be able to get readers, but I doubt I’d see much money from it to pay for the time. That is, when I go looking at the tasks involved in finishing it and getting it out there, the pragmatic me reaches the same conclusion that I did when I chose not to release it in the first place.
Now, of course, what I’m thinking is that I should reduce the scope of the project until it more closely equals the return I can expect. But there are only so many hours in the day that I can spend tap dancing in the street (I say, inspired by your post, Moriah), and while I don’t intend to give up the tap dancing, I may pursue a better venue than this particular street. The fact that a celebrity got applauded for tap dancing in the same spot doesn’t mean I was wrong to leave it.
There are a lot of factors that go into the audience’s judgment, right? And if the audience is the judge, then whose choice is obscurity? No one person’s alone.
@David: “Along with all this newfound power to publish ourselves, we now have the responsibility of convincing people we’re worth listening to.”
Yes! And amen! It’s what Uncle Ben said, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
@Will: The audience can’t choose an option they’re not given, and I think you nailed it with “pursue a better venue than this particular street.”
I should also add that this is a perfect example of “Do as I say, not as I do.” Change the idea in question, and I could have written this post myself several times over the past several years. Touhg lessons, indeed.
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Will,
It’s not easy to do that kind of self-analysis, but I think you nailed it.
I can still remember — vividly — sitting in my sixth-grade class and having the idea for Jurrassic Park drop into my head. It wasn’t called that, of course, but the idea was there — pow! Get DNA for a dinosaur and grow your own!
Original? Hardly. Did Crichton steal from me? Of course not. Could I have used the money? Oh, man….could I have used the money.
To quote (and paraphrase) Hemingway:
“Every writer needs a built-in bullshit detector.”
I think you have a good one.