We Need Your Art is out now

What will happen to you if you read this book?

Ahh, fuck. Today is the day. My book baby is out there. I hope, if you choose to read her, that she takes precious care of you.

In fact, before I drop a little sample of the book baby. I want to write you a list.

What will happen if you read We Need Your Art:

You feel overwhelmingly loved.

You feel taken seriously.

You are firmly awakened to the fact that your creations are needed.

You are given the tools to create a consistant, delicious, creative practice.

You feel fucking ready to get going and make shit.

But simultaneously you know there is no rush.

Your inner critic is handed over to me, and I take care of them in a way they’ve never been cared for. They are quiet. They are safe.

You feel powerful as fuck.

You feel hopeful as fuck.

You get permission to be messy, and the messiness starts to feel safe.

You truly begin to understand why your artistic vision is needed and important.

You get out of your own way.

You feel ready for success.

You feel ready for failure.

You feel ready to use your creative voice uncensored and free.

You feel validated.

You feel needed.

You feel trusting of this process. You can breath deeply.

You are excited.

You are coronated.

You are filled with so many ideas.

You are SURE. Sure that the creative journey is yours to take. Sure. That you are an artist.

INTRODUCTION

We need your art.

I envision you picking up this book, reading the title, and squinting at it with deep suspicion. “My art? Who needs my art?”

We do. The world does.

“The world needs my art?” you ask incredulously.

Your art. We, the people, need YOUR art.

“But why?”

So glad you asked. I wrote a whole book about it. Let’s begin.

Most of us have had, at some time, an inkling that there is something more— that we have something to give, to make, to create. Perhaps you have a glimmer of an idea for a novel or a bizarre pull toward watercolor paints. Maybe every time you watch a good movie you feel overcome with a grief that you weren’t a part of its creation.

You are made to create, but it’s so hard to detach and rewrite the stories we have been sold about what we are meant to be doing with our lives. Many of the systems we’re forced to participate in smother our creative fire; some don’t even let us light the match. We’re told that in order to be responsible, we need to focus on the serious stuff. The adult stuff. Not that art stuff. Not that making stuff. Many of us wouldn’t dare lay claim to the title “Artist.” That word is for a special group of people. Not you, not me, right?

Screw* these stories.

*I have a proclivity for swearing, and my favourite curse word is fuck. In the first draft of this book, the word appeared 130 times. However, to account for different tastes in profanity, we have opted to use the word screw instead within the text. But please know that every time you read the word screw, I mean fuck.

I believe you are on this planet to make art. I believe we all are. Making art is the ultimate human act. The impulse to create is instinctual, untaught, innate to us as a species. I could talk (and I do) to literally anyone and discover that somehow, somewhere, even under the most debilitating circumstances, they are currently creating something or have an idea about something they want to make. Denying art is denying your nature. The act of creation makes a better version of you. It gives you purpose, agency, and challenge. It demands that you explore the caverns of who you are and discover what lives within— the beautiful and the messy.

You are on this planet to make art. Not just for yourself but for the world. Because it needs your art. Humans rely on the arts to inspire, to take refuge, to challenge, to awaken. Communities flourish when artists live within them. Once more: you are on this planet to make art. Spreading that simple idea has been my mission for the past decade.

For a long time, I wanted to tell stories. But I held the shameful belief that making art was frivolous, irresponsible, and embarrassing— that I should probably keep my hopes to myself. Still, I wrote. And as I told my stories, something changed within me. Writing connected me to joy, to ambition, to rebellion and delight. These silly little stories were giving me purpose.

It took a few more years of deconstructing my creative shame to realize this feeling of purpose is precisely the magic of art. Creating gives us agency, it gives us control, it gives us delight. The bizarre external forces of the world no longer batter us, or at least don’t batter us quite so much. When we create, we become the author, the maker, the god of our own little artist realm.

I’m not alone in the realization that art is deeply important for individuals and crucial for communities and society as a whole. Study after study from pioneering researchers like Daisy Fancourt and Maria Rosario Jackson shows the overwhelmingly positive impact of the arts. Creating art consistently not only increases happiness but also reduces negative affect and makes us feel more satisfied. I’ll get into the research later. For now, it’s enough to say we live better when we make art. Not only that, we make other people’s lives significantly better when we make and share our art. Art heals our bodies, improves our mental health, and creates thriving and connected communities. And yet we are still sold the story that creativity is frivolous, reserved only for children and the retired.

Art is for everyone. I’m not just talking to those of you who want to make art professionally. All art is inherently good. It is inherently responsible. Art creates community, it gives us meaning, it heals us. It is the furthest thing from frivolous that it is possible to be. Which is why we need your art. We need it because it not only helps you but everyone around you.

You have been told that the things you want to create don’t matter. We will destroy that lie. If you follow me to the end of this journey, my hope is that you will never doubt your creative calling again. I am here to take you seriously so you can take yourself seriously.

We are storytellers by nature, which means we get to rewrite these stories about what we are meant to be doing with our lives. And we get to put creativity at the center of them. That doesn’t mean it will be easy. We will have to excavate our souls to do so. But the work is exciting, and the reward is worth it: joyful, abundant creation.

“Excavate our souls?” one reader screams. “But I just wanted to make some art.”

SAME. Unfortunately, the making of things means the making of you. Which is both very annoying and very beautiful. But let me reassure you about a few things. You do not need to have been good at art in school to read this book. You do not need to have taken courses. You don’t even need to be a practicing artist. But if you are— if you have been in the arts for decades and thrived— you will also benefit from this book. Because this isn’t a book about craft. I’m not about to tell you how to use parenthesis to create tension in your novel or how to perfect the scumbling technique with your oil paints. That’s a journey for you to traverse through practice, play, and mentorship. I am about to tell you how to get out of your own way and recognize that you have art to make. You could research the scumble and parenthesis for decadesand never create a thing if you do not also learn to get out of your own way. And we all, wherever we are in the journey, need support as we do that.

BUY THE BOOK BABY.