The two types…

In my experience, there are two distinct ways to go about building your career as a creative type.

1 – You can be the person who delivers a project clean, precise, free of mistakes, and hitting all the tropes and conventions.

These people are the journeymen who disappear into their work. Their stories will always satisfy but never blow you away.

They are imminently employable because they hit their deadlines and produce satisfying work that sells well. Even if they never blow your socks off with their sales numbers, they are solid and predictable.

That might sound bad, but you NEED those people who make work that feel like a warm blanket.

It’s like when you want to watch a slasher movie at midnight on a Tuesday, but you don’t want to think too much about it, so you turn to a movie you have watched 1,000 times because it hits all the right notes and makes you feel all cozy inside.

For instance, you know EXACTLY what you are going to get with a Marvel movie, or eating a McDonald’s hamburger, and lots of times you just want something you know, executed in a way you have had many times before; something predictable.

I look for these types of stories all the time with my anthology project.

There is a place for stories so original and different that they make you stand up and take notice, but you also want a good Lovecraftian story. No surprises, just good ole cosmic horror in the way it has been done since the 1920s.

In fact, I’ve seen plenty of anthologies ruined because there are TOO MANY superstars in them and they are all vying for attention. It becomes exhausting to read, because everything is turned up to eleven.

2 – You can be the person that socks people in the mouth with something so wholly original and captivating they have no choice but to stand up and take notice. These are your superstars. The ones that bat clean-up. Everybody knows their names, even if not everybody has read, or even enjoyed their work.

This is something like JoJo Rabbit, where the premise is so wacky it shouldn’t work, and the direction is so unique, that you don’t quite know what to expect, but somehow it all comes together in the end.

These are the people that tend to get all the attention, but honestly, there’s not that much room for them, and they get exhausting quickly.

Yes, you want an original movie sometimes, but how many times can you watch a JoJo Rabbit movie before you simply can’t anymore with the twists and turns?

Making those kinds of projects is exhausting, too, because you have to spin every convention on its head at every chance, and your audience EXPECTS that kind of thing from you, even when you make a “normal” movie like Thor: Ragnarok.

I’ve been listening to a lot of music recently, and much of it is very competent, middle of the road music that makes me calm, and lets me work. It’s soothing.

However, every once and a while I get one that socks me in the gut and makes me stand up. They make me take notice, dive deep, and become obsessed with everything the artist does forever and ever and ever.

But I can’t have too many experiences like that OR I’d literally never get anything done. It’s like a little treat for me when it does happen.

Think about a baseball team. You can only have so many superstars hogging the spotlight.

Most of the team is filled with complementary players, and games are often won by being the guy who can get on base, not the guy who hits home runs.

There is room to be either, and we NEED both types of creative people, because sometimes you want to check out the great new Asian fusion place or coffee shop that has a bonkers drink you’ve never seen before, but sometimes… sometimes you just want some bomb tonkatsu ramen with no surprises, or a black coffee made with precision and deftness.

Sometimes, you want to bungee jump, and sometimes you want to curl up on the couch and tune out the world, and there is room for both, but you need to know which one you are, because both have upsides and downsides, and when you pick a lane, people will expect that from you in the future.

Unfortunately, most people want to be a superstar, but the world is full of bit players who you can call in a pinch (often when the superstar is late or drops the ball) and they can deliver consistency every time.

It’s not that you can’t be Diane von Furstenberg, but somebody ALSO has to make the clothes that go into Target, which will be worn and loved by more people, even if they don’t know your name, and there is absolutely a place for those people on the team.

In fact, they’re essential components of it.