To Succeed, You Must
One of the most frustrating things for me is to be talking with a partner in a project (creative or non-creative) and be told that we should do something one way because that’s what everyone else is doing or because the market dictates that we have to solve a specific need. Specifically, I have been working on a podcast (severe back burner) for two years (Record Store 2016 Baby!!!!!) and everyone tells me the same thing when it comes to monetizing the thing: “How are you going to get advertisers,” then they ask, “Who is going to listen to it”? One, I don’t do it for money so I don’t care about monetization(I will try to get paid for the effort I put in, but I do it because I enjoy doing it). Two, I don’t care who is going to listen to it because it is a project where I get to work with my friends and talk in a structure form; the final outcome, I have their voices preserved for all history and our crazy ideas. I have a personal snapshot of our minds at a specific age – a portal back into the past.
Back to monitization for a moment, all podcasts use the same model for income: advertising (everything in the universe uses this except subscription services); yet, industries do the same thing (if Business A makes money doing Thing Z in way ZYX, then Business B will do their Thing X in way ZYX since it is safe and already proven to be successful). This copycat mentality plagues all walks of life. In order to get a book deal, you need an agent, to get an agent you need to prepare a query letter and provide certain materials based on the agent’s requirements (all utilize query letters) – this is an industry standard.
Now, the book example isn’t a problem cause it allows the writers of the world to easily move from agent to agent without killing themselves over writing a query (except each query gets rewritten, at least, that’s what I do – gotta personalize that shit). The root of my problem is the sale of a product. When the smart phone introduced feature X, most phones had feature X shortly afterwords. Android looks painfully similar to iOS and vice versa. Windows phone was unique in how it handled navigation and use (I have one, it is easy to use and is from six years ago and still doing the things I need it to do), yet, the Windows Phone OS is now dead. Did it fail because the phone didn’t make calls? Was it cause they were late to the party? Or was it because it was too different? No one will know. In the end, we end up with X options in the world and all look the exact same with minor tweaks.
What I do know is that you have to be careful of using market research to design a product. Unfortunately, the market only knows what exists in the market today. So if you go to a bunch of people and ask them what they want to see in product X, they will respond with 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 but what you miss is that they can only count to 10. While your creatives/engineers are thinking all the way to two hundred thirty six. You should poll the market, but you should pitch them ideas they haven’t comprehended so that you solve a need they didn’t know they had.
This concept works for all creative pursuits. The moment you start bending to the market and trying to satisfy their existing needs, you are behind the curve. Everyone else in the world is able to read the same market as you, which means, you are competing against thousands of other products that are about to come out. That’s the danger with building products off of the market’s desires. So, my argument is simple, stop listening to the market and try to solve a need you have personally. Throw your passion into it and keep revising it until you hit something people want. Just don’t go to the market and say: “What can I build for you?” The moment you do that, you are doing the same thing as N people. So differentiate your product by truly creating something unique that you are passionate about.
Read MoreHaiku – On Clothing
black boots, jeans, and top
white walls give way to green hills
same boots… pastel dress?
~Theodore Maestranzi
Read MoreMy White Whale… Document Document Document!
Madrid is the greatest major city in Europe. I’ve only had fine memories of that city and perhaps it is because my young mind was bathed in swirls of rampant sexuality, a rock opera, pizza with orange sauce (I think it was a vodka sauce), carefully managing my money to make it to the end of the vacation, but most importantly, it was where my white whale lives. As an Italian-American, who has family in Italy, I often go back to the motherland to see my cousins and they come here to visit; however my experiences in my family’s mountain village never prepared me for a modern European city. Luckily, and being blessed/privileged enough to have the opportunity, I was able to go on a High school Trip to Europe (Paris, Madrid, and a few other towns).
To be honest, I am not even sure what memories are associated with each city/town/village. It was a rigamarole where a teacher learned he could go to Europe for free with his family if they chaperoned an educational voyage. So, in between eating good food, viewing architecture (Notre Dame has some fucked up sculptures above the doors – but you can get a crepe at the corner of every block), and spending time in museums (don’t see the Mona Lisa, it is depressingly anti-climatic), I was unable to really wander. We had an itinerary that we needed to stick to for our education. I was more aloof back then and was just enjoying my life.
So when I was in a discotheque and teenagers my age were dancing in steel cages (what the fuck Madrid), I was confused… add in the dudes who were 50 watching them and you get a strange twang of gross. Where were their parents? Why were so many kids making out along the walls? Who seriously let in these old fucks? Is this a fever dream? Why is this soda* so expensive? (Oh young Theodore, if only you knew that the price of beer would make that soda look cheap).
But I digress. And this post isn’t about Madrid and the weirdness I experienced there (like that Queen Rock opera I watched when I didn’t speak Spanish… We Will Rock You is amazing – see it if you can, especially with Spaniards singing the English parts). No… this blog post is about The White Whale… not fucking Moby Dick (I have officially met two people who have read that entire book – Hi Angelica and Jason) but specifically my White Whale which is a painting I saw in a museum in Madrid.
Now, I am a person who believes that art should speak to you on a fundamental level. No matter what it is, when you look at it, you should be reduced and unable to comprehend why the painting is making you feel things. You should just have an emotional response. It should lodge itself in your mind and never relinquish its place to another memory. No, a true painting is not something that can’t be deduced by art history or technique. A true painting is something you see and can never forget.
Which is why a painting in Madrid is my White Whale. I’ve forgotten everything around that painting. All I know is that the painting is a double perspective with the Last Supper on one end and an arch on another (which arch? only god knows or an art historian or an architect). Wait, let’s rewind, a double perspective (if I am saying that right) means on Side A of the painting the focus is Object A but on Side B the focus is Object B; therefore, as you walk from Side A to Side B, Object A should shrink and become secondary to Object B. Which means, you can twist what matters to the viewer by simply having them walk to the other side of the painting. According to our tour guide, the painting was placed against a wall by the painter so the patron wouldn’t notice that the arch was the true focus of the piece.
Thus, the painting was subversive. Instead of just painting the Last Supper, the artist went painstakingly out of their way to paint a double perspective that shifted to highlight an arch instead of the supper. I will avoid the philosophical implications of an artist correlating Jesus to a piece of architecture because that is its own nugget to unpack.
So I am rambling, and I guess the outcome of my post is simple: take notes. If something impacts you, don’t assume you will remember it, you won’t. I don’t even know if this painting was in Madrid or Paris. All I know is it was on that trip in Sophomore year. It isn’t some famous painter that you can search for on the internet (I’ve tried) or a painting that everyone knows… no this painting was a magical thing from my teenage years. Everything that happened on that trip is inconsequential when I think of that painting. So go out there and look at art, you never know when it will grab you and make you its servant.
One final note: the most recent piece to slap me upside the head was an intense piece of graffiti, and luckily, I had my notebook and took notes that later turned into the inspiration for a painting in Bohr’s Bathos. You never know when inspiration or art will grab you… so be prepared.
~Theodore
*I’ll never use a brand name on this website. Go drink some tea… soda is poison.
Read MoreI am Back – End of the Year Update
So this blog post was originally slated to come out on December 23rd, 2017, but I was involved in an accident where a person ran a red light and t-boned my car. As such, I haven’t had time to focus on writing up a blog for the end of the year. Finally, the insanity of scrambling to solve my automotive issues stabilized with an eleven hour work day today. So, as I sit here listening to Norah Jones, I am wondering if I should wax philosophical about life and how quickly you can be snuffed out, but I won’t do that. Instead, I will focus on what this post was supposed to be about: the end of my year. I will probably discuss the accident later, but for now, just make sure you have side impact airbags and wear your seat belt the second you get into your car.
Now, let’s get into 2017 for me. Specifically, it was a rough year with a lot of focus on polishing old pieces, reading, short stories, fighting for the oxford comma, and not having time for life. In terms of writing here are some things I did this year:
- Finished Bohr’s Bathos (maybe last year | 2016)
- Polished Bohr’s Bathos (four major revisions)
- Wrote the novella: Gaia’s Revenge
- Cranked out a crap ton of short stories (see the post on my output for dates and times: State of my Writing 2017)
- Got my blog post output up there (over four per a month)
- Increased my Haiku writing
- Started Manuscript 8 (Nasty little nugget – research began at the beginning of the year and is still ongoing with 12,000+ words being written).
- Began a project called Project Grim
- Wrote a screen play with two other writers
- Further defined a two year old podcast and narrowed down what I think it will become
- And probably some other stuff I am forgetting
But what has been important is clearing the fog from my mind. On December 23rd, 2017, I was super excited to have a blog post go out and mention that I hadn’t had a cigarette in two months. While I still haven’t had a cigarette since September 23rd, 2017, I really wanted it to be on that date. Yet, I survived an accident and still didn’t smoke. I dropped booze from my life simultaneously (a beer here or there, but living that clean life yo). And basically straightened out everything that has been a distraction from my writing. Even eating healthy regularly has replaced the five dollar specials from my local bar. Then I began working out regularly and my body is now falling into line with my mind. All of this happened well before my accident, so it wasn’t some “see the white light and fix your life” moment for me. I am just glad I didn’t slip back into old habits due to that event.
Now, I just need to get back to the basics of writing everyday. My goal is to have a schedule that follows:
- Write
- Read
- Edit
- Workout
- Study Italian
- Cook
- Clean dishes
- Spend time with friends and family
- Veg out
Here is to 2018! Fuck resolutions, I plan to keep crushing it and cranking away at this writing thing. Wear your damn seat belt and remember it’s those that you leave behind that suffer.
~Theodore
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