Publish or Perish: Taking it Professionally
In my last blog I wrote about the benefits of writing online and how it can help artists and other professionals promote their products and skills. Blogging has allowed me to easily promote my work to a global audience while enhancing my practice and stimulating ideas. Here are some simple suggestions on making blogging easier. The best advice I ever received was before I started keeping a column and that was “Make it like a job”. That was from my good friend and professional journalist John McCrank. For some reason those words resonated with me. I took his words to heart and that is how I proceeded.
First off I picked a direction yes I wanted to promote my art, in general though I wanted to promote art and the creation of art, I also wanted to gain certain knowledge. I figured if I could fit some subversive thought in there too I would have it made. So off to work I went.
As artists our job in general allows us a certain leeway, so taking that into account I always felt I had a certain amount of freedom to express myself. After all that is probably one of the key definitions of my job, SELF EXPRESSION. It didn’t mean I could just scroll out any idea that spilled from my head though. I could have easily gone off and spewed about everything I hated and everything thing I thought was wrong about the art world. I decided that that was not going to get me to where I wanted in this case. I decided I would use this opportunity to add too and promote my community.
yes this is me air-guitaring in my underwear(see point later about mistakes)
One of the first tings I did was write a list of Ten things I knew my reader might not. I chose to write on Ten Canadian Artists I thought people should know. After that I thought I should introduce myself so people would know why they should read my opinion so I interviewed myself. From then one idea lead to another I reviewed a show then interviewed a friend, then wrote about books I was reading, so on and so forth until, I found myself interviewing some of my greatest influences suddenly and sitting in at VIP press conferences at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art listening to some of Canada’s top arts. Their wisdom is Mammoth, and No Amount of Money could replace the knowledge I have acquired.
People want to help you. In general if a successful professional sees you putting some earnest effort into how you approach them and in what your doing they will more than gladly share their knowledge with you. I first experienced this with a cold call email to Bank of Montreal. I met one of their curators who showed me their private collections. This happen again with the head of public relations at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art. Mdme. Legentil has given me insane amounts of advice and help on writing my articles. As well as MASSIVE AMOUNTS of Access to the Musees staff, artists and exhibitions. These people are also willing to let you make mistakes, they understand you’re new
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It is not always easy though you have to be prepared to face rejection and sometimes it can take months for a project to come through. So always be working on something and keep working on things eventually at one point you will have more ideas and articles then you will know what to do with and articles will practically write themselves.”
And As Always Remember,
PUBLISH OR PERISH FUCKERS
More Publish or Perish
Publishing for Newbies
Winning Friends and Influencing People
Power Writing
Keep it Simple Silly
Using What’s in Front of You
Rossetto Ink 