When an essay, an article or a blog post need to come to life, we try to start that with a question. That is that we are supposed to produce an answer, to a problem, or a potential problem. Hemingway called it “The White Bull”, the blank page rolled in his machine staring at him, demanding to be filled. That’s not the case with us, we have a white portion of a screen and the options provided by our software of choice. With that we try to change the world, at least, our world.
Of course that is hardly ever the case. Everything I read about how to get more followers, how to reach more people, especially among steemians, is always to provide a solution. Give something that provides a form of value. The video below the title is the closest I can be to a success story. A show of how I started drawing and how far I’ve gotten since early November 2011, when I actually started experimenting with visual arts, by drawing.
People around me have been very supportive, and I have learned to draw with the sole purpose to produce a comic, precisely speaking, a webcomic. Due to the fact that I think is the only way to speak directly to whomever is reading. Closer to the idea of having a community that comes for a moment to share with me and my stories, the way oral history used to happen for thousands of years, a community would come to share a meal and hearth, and enjoy stories. Even today we have it in the form of radio-dramas, audiobooks, podcasts, etc.
The dry spell attacks me, every time I realize I fail to connect with enough people. I usually blame my poor artistic skills, even though I know that well marketed, everything can be sold. So I should blame poor marketing skills and lack of patience. These thoughts just push me to keep drawing, regrettably, it hasn’t really pushed me to promote my work in a more efficient way. I trust my friends and family with a like on regular social media, however not with a repost. Which keeps leading me to believe that maybe I’m not drawing properly or not writing alluringly, or, that I just need to keep posting, find my community and keep working. Drawing is not the problem, I draw every day or I don’t spend more than two days without drawing. Writing and keeping a story is not necessarily an issue, but I expect it to be so perfect and go viral from the first 10 or 12 posts, that I just put too much of a burden on my shoulders and I try to rewrite, reboot, rethink so many things, that I fall on horrendous procrastination.
Success stories are usually a matter of order and tenacity much more than ones of luck or talent. Staying in this community is the most consistent I have been with posting, the most creative too as well as the more I have experimented with different medial. There are so many things I want to try, I just realized it could mean content for every day, with a lot of trust in the fruits of my imagination, and the stories that have been with me for years or, sometimes, just a couple of days. Will they work? Ask me again next year. I mean it.