The Creator's Dilemma

Plus a link to my guest spot on The Thrilling Adventure Hour!

Thanks so much for the kind words, encouragement, and sharing your own stories with me after the last issue. I’m happy to report that after five weeks of this program I’m feeling much better, walking and/or hiking every day without pain. As of last night, I even have the range of motion in my knees to ride our knockoff Peloton.

Game on!

First hike of the new year!

Things finally started popping off on the business side after Sundance. I’m relieved because I was starting to feel like my day job was watching fitness and nutrition videos on YouTube. Jesus, there’s a lot of bro science out there. But I did come across a video from  Chris Bumstead, the reigning Mr. Olympia Classic Physique Champion, with a quote I had to write down. “Winning doesn’t happen on show day. It happens in early mornings, painful workouts, long cardio sessions, and hungry nights.”

That certainly applies to achieving success as a writer in this business. Winning doesn’t happen in the Deadline article. It happens in the hours, days, weeks, months, years that you put in the chair, working on your craft. It happens in the relationships and reputation that you build. The risks you take. All the times you pick yourself up from failure or start all over from scratch. Winning is a long game.

This past week my pilot and my feature spec started making the rounds. I had a zoom with my producer and director to go over our “road show,” aka the series pitch, and I feel great about it. I’m also checking out some incoming submissions and finally scratching away on new stuff. With any luck I’ll have more to tell you about all of this soon. Still waiting, but I’m waiting at the next station.

Recently, I listened to a great episode of The Freakonomics Radio podcast, called, “What’s Wrong with Being a One-Hit Wonder?” I found it insightful, and heartening, if not downright inspirational, by the end. The host, Stephen Dubner, interviewed a number of organizational psychologists and artists, including Sean Nelson, the lead singer of Harvey Danger, and author/chef, Samin Nosrat.

Organizational psychologist Marcus Baer talked about a study he did where he looked at the rate at which first time cookbook authors wrote a second book. What the study found was that, “The novelty of a first production can lower the probability of creating a second production, particularly when the first production is bestowed with an award or recognition.” Only half of the authors published a second book within five years, and the authors who had won awards were more likely to be in the category that didn’t publish a second book.

Dr. Baer attributed some of that to fear, that if you won an award for a uniquely creative, award winning work, trying to repeat that success was a threat to your creative identity. Their success created such outsized expectations, both internal and external, that it became hard to write the next one.

I can certainly see how that might be the case for a lot of people. But I also think it’s underestimating the sheer miracle that the original thing ever came into being and managed to reach those heights in the first place!

Another organizational psychologist, Justin Berg, put it this way: “The odds are long against any creative work being a hit, such that, when it’s a hit, that should be celebrated as a giant accomplishment.”

Amen!

He did a study of one-hit wonders in pop music between the years of 1959 and 2010. What he learned was that, “Of the 70k artists in their database, 93% never had a single hit. Of the 7% who did have a hit, nearly half had only one hit.” He came up with a theory that the difference between a one-hit wonder and a repeat hitmaker was something called, “path dependence.”

The idea is that what happens early in a process can limit the range of options you have by the end of that process. The artists who had their first hit with more “creative” (ie, more novel + more variety) in their portfolios were more likely to keep generating hits. Those with less creative portfolios were more likely to be one-hit wonders. But here’s a tradeoff…

New artists who build “novel” portfolios are less likely to ever have a hit. If you spend your time creating something totally unique, something that is unlike anything else out there, you are less likely to hit the proverbial jackpot. If you are lucky enough to make it, and your goal is solely to sustain your commercial success, then the time for all that creativity and experimentation is over. Your continued success depends on “relatedness,” the idea that your new stuff is a lot like the thing that got you to the top, and your ability to adapt to the changing market.

Harvey Danger released “Flagpole Sitta” in 1998. Sean Nelson says, “There was an element, not that we wrote the thing, but that we found the thing.” It was energetic, and punk-ish, but it also had a classic pop sensibility. A catchy combination of old and new. And it was everywhere! But… it was unlike everything else on their album.

That’s one of the other catches. If the thing that breaks through is way different from all your other work, you’re less likely, statistically, to repeat your success. (This is why it’s probably a good idea to have a number of scripts in your preferred genre when you’re trying to break in!)

Stephen Dubner talked about, “The creator’s dilemma.” The artist wants to keep evolving, but that evolution comes with a cost. If you keep pushing the boundaries and experimenting with new forms and ideas you’re less likely to have continued commercial success.

So, how do we solve this dilemma?

It depends on what our goals are.

If your goals is to replicate your success then you can try to build on and exploit the thing that got you through the door, on the air, or the gallery wall, or sitting at the top of the charts. Of course, the market and the medium are going to continue to evolve. Tastes change. What’s popular today may or may not be popular tomorrow. We see this in Hollywood all the time.

If your goal is to be “creative,” to push the boundaries of your art form, or explore other interests, you should keep doing that. But you have to accept the fact that the market may never come around to you. If it does, if you catch that lightning in a bottle, it may only happen once. (Save some of the money!)

Either way, we have to accept that a lot of these outcomes are out of our control, anyway. All we can do is continue on the path we’re on. Or not.

Dr. Baer says, “Take the work seriously. Take the process seriously. Don’t take yourself seriously.” I like that advice.

It seems to me, given all the unknowns, still the smartest thing to do is to make the stuff you are most compelled to make. I’ve never had any success trying to game the system. The house always wins. All I can do is write the stuff I think is cool to the best of my abilities. Everything else is out of my control.

Not long after I listened to this podcast, I watched Jaqueline Novak’s comedy special, Get On Your Knees, on Netflix. I was blown away by it. It felt so fresh and exciting, so unlike any of the other specials that are out there right now, especially the ones from “comedy superstars” that just seem tired and out of date. I think it’s an extraordinary work of art. Then I read an extensive profile of her in The New Yorker where she talks about how she made a conscious choice to focus on one big project:

In 2017, Novak had an epiphany. The key to success wasn’t slowly working your way up, grasping for small opportunities. Instead, she decided to channel her energies into one exceptional piece of work. She told Laker about this fairly abstract plan while walking near their apartment, on the Upper West Side. He told me, “She had that realization of: You’ve gotta make one great thing and concentrate on that.”

I love the idea of that, even if I don’t think I’m quite built for it.

It will be interesting to see how soon she follows this up and how. Whether she comes out with another one in a couple of years, or it takes ten, I’ll be there. And if, to our great misfortune, this is the only one we ever get, I’m going to celebrate it for the miracle that it is! (But it definitely won’t be.)

Last couple of things:

This season of FARGO might just be my favorite. I’m especially impressed by the way Noah Hawley and his team are able to wing out every last frame of suspense. I rewatched BLOOD SIMPLE the other night and The Cones were masters of that right out of the gate. The show is its own thing but the power to keep you on the edge of your seat is in the DNA. If you haven’t seen it yet I can’t recommend it enough.

Also, Christmas came waaaay early for me as one William Joel of Long Island released his first new song in 17 years. No surprise, I love it, will absolutely be watching him play it live somewhere this year. Check it out! And here's a short article about it on the Rolling Stone website with a couple of great quotes about his creative process.

Lastly, my brilliant friends Ben Acker and Ben Blacker invited me to write one of the Sparks Nevada segments of their throwback to old-time radio shows, The Thrilling Adventure Hour, back in December. I had a blast working with them and getting to see the cast pull it off live at The Bourbon Room was one of the highlights of the year.

You can purchase a VOD stream of the the whole show right here!

I hope you have a great weekend!