I’ve Started A New Podcast! And A New Newsletter! And… Oh, Please, Just Check It Out.

So as part of my 2021 New Year’s Resolutions, I decided I would get good at art that I sucked at. And what have I wanted to do for years?

I’ve wanted to podcast. About books I loved. More specifically, about extracting the writing techniques that made those books so damn lovable.

Now, I wrote at length today in my new Substack newsletter about my terror of being bad at art in public, in an essay I called “The Dreadful Necessity Of Imperfection.” And if you feel like looking at that essay, well, it’s there.

The post today here is that the podcast I have is called “…And We Will Plunder Their Prose,” which is 12 minutes of me detailing why Stephen Graham Jones’ “The Only Good Indians” is such an effective horror novel. And I’ll be posting a new episode every two weeks; I already have three more in the hopper, waiting to go.

So. If you like what I do and want to follow me elsewhere, I’ve got three new things for you to check out!

• That aforementioned podcast “…And We Will Plunder Their Prose.”
• My new newsletter “Plant Seeds In The Ashes,” where I’ll be discussing the challenges of renewing my artistic love after seriously burning out in 2020.
• My Photograph A Day project, where I take a daily picture chronicling my life in an attempt to learn how to be visual.

If you feel like giving feedback on anything (or specifically the podcast), I welcome it – but don’t do it here. I’m still a little tender, so comments with feedback will be deleted. Instead, email me at theferrett@theferrett.com with what you think I could have done better, and I’ll read ’em when I’m in Big Strong Critique-Man Artist headspace… which is not now.

Today, I’m just vowing to start sucking more in public – taking more chances, putting art that’s as good as I can make it into the world, knowing that I have so much to learn. But to quote Jake in the wisest thing Adventure Time ever said, “Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.”

And also, my favorite thing Ira Glass ever said:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Anyway.

I have new art.

Take a look if you want.