Interlude: Something New
It’s almost 5 AM and I can’t sleep, so I’ve decided to get up and finish the newsletter I had planned to release on Sunday, which was going to be all about how I’ve decided to turn this into a pottery newsletter.
After the success of my first sale in early December, I was riding high on a wave of ambition. I filed for a DBA, set up my website, and spent the bulk of my two weeks at home itching to get back in the studio.
However, the first two weeks back in the studio were disastrous. Everything I made came out wrong. Worse, nothing felt fun anymore. I felt like I was wasting time in the studio when I should have been focused on signing up for markets, improving my website, developing a social media content calendar in order to grow my following, and figuring out everything else.
As the number of things I needed to do to create a “real” pottery business continued to pile up, I realized that I had made the terrible mistake of turning a source of much-needed comfort during one of the most difficult periods of my life into yet another job.
So I quit. I stopped going to the studio (except for work). I stopped painting my underglaze transfers at home. I stopped posting to Instagram, and soon, I started to feel inspired again.
Since then, I’ve returned to the studio and have created some of my favorite pieces yet. More importantly, though, I’ve been able to step back and reflect on exactly how I want to advance my artistic practice. I see, in my future, a studio space, a kiln of my own, and a pint-sized bottle of every glaze and underglaze Amaco offers. What I’m currently struggling with, however, is how to reconcile that dream with the one I’ve been pursuing for over a year now, of building this weekly newsletter.
Why am I struggling with what seems to be a Reese’s-peanut-butter-cup-commercial-style collision of my creative pursuits, you ask? Frankly, as I write this, I’m also confounded. Just a couple of newsletters ago, I wrote about the need to choose a focus for this newsletter. Having serendipitously named this newsletter Soup Season, converting it into a ceramics newsletter seems like an obvious solution to being stretched too thin to enjoy my creative pursuits.
I think it has something to do with being a commitmentphobe. I’ve quit writing so many times, always in search of more “acceptable” occupations, which I’ve then quit because, didn’t I always want to be a writer after all? Self-conscious about choosing a career people have been telling me is a bad idea since day 1, I simply hid it. Moving in silence like lasagna, I started pseudonymous blogs, a Tumblr, a Finsta, etc. When I did get published, I never shared it widely. I was too self-conscious that I would prove my detractors right—I had no business being a writer.
I almost did the same with pottery. I started a separate art Instagram, built a separate website, and was on the verge of starting a separate newsletter, when I realized that what I was actually doing was trying to hide from the perceived judgment of people, most of whom I don’t even associate with anymore.
I haven’t yet achieved what I originally set out to with this newsletter. I’m still so far from consistently producing writing I’m satisfied with, and I’m afraid that, if I change the focus of this project, I’ll never get there.
But I will also never get there if I keep trying to do everything at once. So with that in mind, I’m making a few changes. I still hope to write a serious essay here about once a month. I remain socially and culturally “concerned” and want to find ways to think about ceramics through that lens. I also want to write more about the strange world of freelancing and online creating I’ve found myself in, my discomfort with the concept of the “creative entrepreneur,” and the ethics of selling consumer goods in a world already too full of things.
I also hope to use this as an opportunity to expand the offerings of this newsletter. I hope to incorporate more audio and video through things like vlogs. I have a list of potential interviewees—ceramic artists and writers whose work I deeply admire. I also think this is a ripe opportunity to start a Q&A column.
Everything is wet clay at this point, still taking shape, but there are some things that will be changing for certain.
First, the main newsletter will come out on Sundays instead of Fridays. I’m going to re-introduce the mid-week Interlude for paid subscribers, this time each week. I never really knew what to do with this segment when I first launched it, but now I will use it to offer a more intimate look at my studio practice, my inspiration, and my work in progress. While I do still hope to write essays, the bulk of newsletters will be things like blogs, interviews with other artists, and Q&As. Most of my previous newsletters will go into the archive, but I’ll leave a few up.
Here’s what the new subscriber offerings will look like:
I’m so excited for this new chapter of Soup Season. Thank you all for your support over the past year and a half. I hope that you’ll enjoy this new spin on my newsletter. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these changes, so please reach out by replying to this email or to katherine@ecstaticrevival.com.
See you Sunday!