Nurturing, Or How I Like Starting Fires

Like lots of teenagers, I was obsessed with fire. I never smoked, but I always had a lighter. I would singe my (recently acquired) arm hair just to revel in the terrible smell. I had a pocket-sized can of hairspray I used as a mini-flamethrower, and one day after school I used it to set my World Famous canvas backpack alight. I used the charred remains for months until it fell apart.

At the age of fourteen, it was incredibly compelling to make wild things happen.

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I still like to make wild things happen. And help other people do it, too.

But I like to nurture from afar. For instance: I created a game design summercamp, but didn’t want to run it. I publish DIY Novel Writing articles, but have never taught a creative writing course. The most obvious reason for this is that, as a self-taught creator, I don’t feel particularly drawn to go step-by-step with an individual student.

I did have a teaching job, once: eight months teaching English to ten year olds in a small farming town in Korea. To prepare for that I offered a zine-making workshop to some kids in a downtown Toronto school. I came in once a week for four or five weeks, giving the twelve-year-olds incremental homework until they could publish a zine at the end of it. There were five or six kids at the start, chosen by the teacher for their writing skill, but one by one they dropped out until at the end, only one girl remained. She had a great experience with her zine, even going into a second printing soon after publication.

I felt the failure of losing those other kids more intensely than feeling the success of the one kid who benefitted. I felt like I pushed the other kids too hard, extinguishing the small cinder of interest that could have been gently coaxed into a full flame. And I felt like the kid who made a zine would have probably made one on her own. She didn’t need me, like I didn’t need most of my teachers.

In general, this is why I prefer to create resources for creators who already make their own work, writer’s circles or initiatives that allow active people to meet each other and collaborate. I avoid the cinder stage because I fear I’ll fuck it up. I become impatient and strict — not a great vibe for exploring something new.

As a parent, I’m conscious of this and try to nurture the enjoyment of creation when it comes to her drawing. When you’re a kid, developing a sense of ownership and confidence around an activity is so much more important than the end product or performance. It’s a virtuous cycle: feeling you’re good at something leads to doing it more, and doing it more makes you better at it.

I remember two early, formative experiences that shaped my confidence as a writer. One was in grade five when our school principal read out my scary story in class dramatically and glowingly praised it. My mom was really supportive as well, always reading my stories and giving me positive reinforcement. I think I was 14 or 15 (embarrassingly) when I realized: Hey… I think she just likes everything I write! But by that age, it was too late: my confidence was unassailable, and thanks to that it was so much easier to keep at it and get better.

In university, I found the traditional critique workshops I attended to be unhelpful, with 30 aspiring writers invited to pick at each other’s flaws. Sure, at some stage it’s useful to focus on your weaknesses, but undergrad feels too early — most people are still at the vulnerable cinder stage. Students come from radically different creative traditions and will often attack to defend their own aesthetic choices.

Some friends in Chicago told me about a Story Workshop model that sounded more useful to me. As I understood it, it abandons the traditional model of critique, and asks students to discuss what they like in each other’s writing. If your work is funny, for instance, you’re encouraged to lean into that aspect of your writing. I particularly like this because it systematizes a “Just keep writing!” approach that I believe in, but also is nurturing by focusing on the positive rather than just being indiscriminately nice.

I’m at the point in my career where many of my artist peers teach as an additional income stream as well as to share their learnings and passion. Sometimes they ask me to come in and talk to the students. Though I feel less fraudulent as the years go by, I still don’t think I can teach them anything about creating art, so instead I latch onto something that I wish I could tell my earlier self. Something that would have made my life so much easier, that I might have struggled with for years. I communicate these things with a kind of earnestness and intensity, realizing that they might not land with the students for years.

Of course, teaching is not the only way to nurture. I have had a few mentors and have been a mentor as well, and I find these relationships to be more gratifying. Sometimes I’ve realized someone was a mentor in hindsight, and that’s fine — it takes the pressure off. But mentorship is more than the advice or perspective you get, it’s a kind of modelling: this person is this advice embodied and lived. And there’s also this sense that the person is looking out for you, and is rooting for you. Which is a really nice feeling, both to give and receive.

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I can do the cinder-to-flame stage. But I’m better at building a structure out of whatever sticks I find lying around, helping the flames find each other, and watching in delight as they form a blaze.

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If you find this subject interesting you might want to listen to the companion interview in The Joy of Being Wrong. This episode is with Hartley Lin, a cartoonist whose excellent graphic novel just won a Doug Wright Award. We talk about parenting and why talking ghosts are just too easy.

Illustrations: Hartley Lin (Pope Hats #6)
Feedback: Ed Gass-Donnelly, Dustin Freeman, Miki Zuckerman, Rob Segal, Shane O’Donnell

This is a part of the Fallow Year Essays, reflective pieces on art and cultural production I’m writing now that I’m 20 years deep into my practice. Previous articles are about productivity, money, and self-discipline.

If you’d like to see me continue to make stuff for another twenty years, you can encourage me by signing up for my mailing list:

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