Interviews – Page 2 – Charles Daly

One Question for Seth Godin

This blog owes its existence to the wisdom of Seth Godin. These posts are an exercise in what he calls “shipping.” I make something every day and put it out in the world in order to practice the vulnerability required to make art. I think out loud often enough and publicly enough that I lose any fear of sharing my words. Seth Godin’s blog is my model.

For those of you who don’t know, Seth Godin is the best selling author of Poke the Box, the Icarus Deception, and the Purple Cow. He is the founder of Squidoo and Yoyodyne, one of the first online marketing firms. Forbes Magazine described Godin as a “Demigod on the web… uniquely respected for his understanding of the internet.”

Recently Godin reached out to his readers for questions to address in an online course on freelancing. Mine is one of the questions that he chose. Here’s what he had to say:

Charles Daly:
If, starting today, you had to draw 100% of your income from writing fiction how would you go about doing that? As writers we’re told that only the outliers get to pay the bills with novels, is that true?

Seth Godin:
As I’ve said before, and I’m going to keep saying, being generic is a choice. Being average is a choice, being in the middle is a choice. Only outliers can make a good living as freelancers. Only outliers make a living writing fiction.

[..]

It’s the outliers who succeed, so that’s not the question. The question is: what type of outlier are you willing to be?

One type of outlier is to be the writer of a specific type of genre fiction that you can own, that you can be the leader of, that you can be on the edge of. There’s someone I was talking to the other day who writes adult fiction that involves men and women and various furry animals. Don’t ask me, but there are people who really want that and if you’re the one who owns that genre you can do just fine.

The other alternative is […] to build a subscriber base. You, like Charles Dickens, can have people who sign up to hear from you on a regular basis.

So our work, as a writer of fiction, is to build something people want to talk about and they want to sign up for.

What I say to every first-time novelist is simple: if you can’t get it sold to a big, fancy publishing house (and you probably can’t,) take your novel, print it to PDF–make it pretty–and then send your novel to a hundred people. If they share it with a thousand or ten thousand people you’re doing great and publishers will start calling you. And if they don’t share it, well, your novel wasn’t that good and you should start over. But either way, it doesn’t wait for you to sit around hoping to get picked.

Seth Godin’s Freelancer Course is available through Udemy. It is a must for anyone interested in freelancing and entrepreneurship. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Along with Seth Godin’s eighty-seven mini lectures (varying in length from 1 to 5 minutes,) you get an active and supportive online community, and assignments to evaluate your assets as a freelancer.

There’s another lesson here: I almost didn’t submit my question. There was a deadline, so I didn’t think I had enough time to craft something perfect that would wow my hero (because that’s why you ask questions, right?) Besides, I’m not someone who wins contests anyway. My question was far from perfect–I think I sounded like a fourth grader on career day–but I shipped it.

Thank you, Seth.

Bonus: Alizé Meurisse’s Orange Typewriter Draft

Alizé Meurisse’s orange typewriter draft, typos and all:

‘Parapluie’

‘Flowers’

The Orange Typewriter joins the Springsioux Tribe

Alisa Gusakova

Rings by Springsioux

Photo by Sime Eskinja

The orange typewriter welcomes Pierre-Antoine De Myttenaere and Alisa Gusakova, founders of the lifestyle brand Springsioux. This summer they will launch a collection made by a ‘tribe’ of artists from Paris and beyond. Drawing from street art, tattooing, after hours culture, and music (with a mix-tape on their website). Springsioux began with an update on the rock and roll essential, the black t-shirt, adding creatures from Native American lore.

Springsioux’s 2012 line features silk t-shirts, fish leather bracelets, and a capsule collection combining silver and fur by Orange Typewriter Guest and fur master Quentin Veron.

S&D: How did you assemble the tribe?

PA: Springsioux began with a t-shirts line I put together when I was playing in a new wave band. Alisa managed our Russian tour and during this trip we shared ideas and realized we had a lot in common. We found a perfect balance between creative energy and business so we decided to partner up and launch a jewelry line.

Our friend Photographer Pierre Yves Toledano was also with us during this Russian tour that gave birth to a team with the motto: work hard, party harder.

Pierre-Antoine live in
St. Petersburg.

S&D: What have been some influences on the style of Springsioux?

Alisa: We are influenced by underground subcultures linked to heavy metal, and by native American and Mexicans artwork. We try to combine both universes into something unique using unusual combinations of material like fish-leather and silver…I fell in love with fish-leather several years ago in Russia: we can credit Alexander Wang as a major inspiration for our work with this material.

the Tribe’s DJ Victoria Frangie

S&D: Has your personal look influenced Springsioux or visa versa?

Alisa: Our first creations were what we wanted to wear but couldn’t find in other brands. We don’t really think about what people are expecting to buy, we focus more on creating pieces we love. Springsioux gives us the opportunity to enhance and share our wardrobe and our personal style.

S&D: Tell us more about the Tribe’s Paris roots.

P.A: As the months passed, we gathered talented people who believed in us. DJ Victoria Frangie became our brand ambassador. Music video director Aurélien Offner joined the tribe, and we’ve recently started a collaboration with tattoo artist Eddie Czaicki on a t-shirt line which will be released in September. We are also currently working with fur designer Quentin Veron on an accessory line. As we collaborate we strengthen and expanded the tribe. This is what makes these projects totally exciting.

“Springsioux is a tribe, weaving through the crowd,
remaining alive in the darkness…”

S&D: The brand’s motto is ‘alive in the darkness’ describe what this means to you:

P.A: Springsioux has evolved in the shadows. We are not interested in the mainstream culture; our goal is to create something different and powerful, something for a person to wear while doing his/her own thing. We’re fighting against conformity and creating a community while we’re at it…Springsioux is a tribe, weaving through the crowd, remaining alive in the darkness.

Interview by Charlie Daly

Next time: The Orange Typewriter crosses the Atlantic and Lake Michigan to meet Craig Engel and Lorrisa Julianus: partners on stage, in the studio and in life.

Bonus: Quentin Veron’s Typewritten Draft

Here is the first draft of Quentin Veron’s orange typewriter interview, typos and all:

* * *

Interview by Charlie Daly
Fur by Quentin Veron

Hannah Day flies over to the orange typewriter

California born, artist and environmentalist Hannah Day came to Paris this year to study French and to draw trees. A constant in Hannah’s work on both sides of the Atlantic, trees have extended their roots in this young artist’s life far beyond her sketchbooks. As a fruitarian, Hanna relies on trees for everything she eats. And she helps save the trees she paints by doing much of her work on used shopping bags and postcards. Her environmental concerns, green lifestyle, and artistic passions are spiritually grounded, if that’s the right word, in Hannah’s practice of ‘Flying’ yoga. Hannah is currently working on her first children’s book.

S&D: Why do you draw trees instead of sunsets, skyscrapers, or jam-jars?

H.D: Well, I didn’t really choose to draw trees. In fact, I resisted the idea for quite a while, beginning when I did one drawing in my freshman year of college in which trees were an essential element; I was hesitant because trees are a common subject… It ended up being the first drawing I ever completed that I felt was truly successful. At the time I thought my drawing’s success was despite the trees, not because of them. I realized that trees are only cliché the way a naked woman’s figure is cliché; artists have returned to them over and over for a reason.

S&D: You are a fruitarian, what role has this played in your artistic life?

H.D: It was when I began eating a diet based on raw, whole fruit that I truly became enamored with trees, and as a result, came to accept my habit of drawing them. Their being the source of every piece of succulent sustenance that I consume suddenly brought trees to life in a whole new way. My drawings became illustrations of my reverence for these beings that generously dispense bushels of delicious food. Fruit trees produce more calories per acre than any other crop, and are the only crop that gives back to the soil. At the same time, their branches provide shade and shelter to many a creature, including us, and their roots wind through the earth beneath them to offer stability to the surrounding terrain…The beauty of the simple existence of something so gracious as the fruit tree makes me feel an inexplicable joy which I feel may have saved my work from rolling down a more cynical road.

S&D: But Paris is a big, dirty city…why paris?

H.D: It was kind of something that I had always planned on doing. Ever since I started studying French I have wanted to be immersed in the language. I have changed a lot since I originally made those plans; there is very little about the lifestyle here that fits with my current love of the sun, nature and fresh produce—but the art remains. There is a creative energy here that is infectious. I feel that one is encouraged in his or her creative endeavors; art is not deemed a selfish use of one’s time, but a way of life, and a way to share one’s life.

S&D: Advice for young painters?

H.D: The best advice I have ever received, as an artist, is to just keep working. Allow yourself to produce bad work—mountains of it—and don’t let it discourage you from continuing to create. My yoga teacher here in Paris once explained that the tradition of Kundalini Yoga believes that not only can we not prevent ourselves from making mistakes, but that we can not stop ourselves from making the same mistake numerous times. We must continue making the same mistake until we learn the lesson that we are intended to glean from finding ourselves in the confounding situation over and over again. The hardest part about being a young artist is trying to find what you want to talk about in your work, how to communicate what is driving you to sit yourself down in your studio, or in your room with your guitar, or in front of your typewriter.

S&D: Advice for young environmentalists?

H.D: It is physically impossible to live on this planet without affecting the state of it and all of the creatures who live on it. But as with being an artist, the most important thing is not to be discouraged, and more than that, to never ever believe that all that you do, or all that you dream of doing, will be for naught.

Next Time: Next week, poet Margaux Curcuru returns to interview Stacks & Dropper’s Charlie Daly about the orange typewriter series, sex, swimming, and Oscar Wilde.