Shouting Into The Void: On Creating Without An Audience

What's the point of sharing anything if no one's around to support it.

The last six weeks have been a blur of travel and poems. ICYMI I recently launched a project in which I send you a physical printed poem every month. With a stamp, in the mail, tangible art. My first month of Poem Club I had 213 members, which was completely mind boggling. I’ve never received so much support so quickly for a project. At the beginning of July I posted a second video, which did well on both Instagram and TikTok. By the 13th, I had over a thousand members (!!!!), and I capped the list for my own sanity.

Anyways, blah blah blah, shop talk etc. What I really want to write about is a comment I got on that second video. It said: “I say this with curiosity not dismissal but would you have done the same without any audience you’ve gained online? I want to do many things like this but I know their success is based on shooting things out into the world with some form of interested audience. I can do these things as a lone interested party but having an audience already will full the engagement process and how projects evolve.”

(For reference, when the video was posted I had roughly 29K TikTok followers, and 2.4k Instagram followers.)

I wasn’t offended when I read this comment. I’ve felt that way before. Like things wouldn’t matter as much unless I had X amount of followers. That I should wait to start something until I know I have people out there to receive it. They tell you that numbers don’t matter, and they’re not lying in that there is no amount of followers, subscribers, comments, or likes that have ever cured my insecurity and self doubt. But they are lying in that the financial success of projects can often be tied directly to the amount of people who see and engage with them.

It doesn’t mean it’s pointless to do things without an audience. But it does mean that people who have an engaged community are one step closer to launching a successful project. There are a lot of “but also”s involved. Just because you have a large following doesn’t mean your project is going to be an instant hit. But also having a large following does help with your initial outreach.

examples from my 2015 zine club

The answer I have to give to this commenter is complicated. I’ve been thinking about the question a lot, mulling it over with R and my friends. To put it plainly:

1. Having an audience helps projects flourish.

2. I actually have done this before, without an audience. In 2015 I launched a similar project I called “Zine Club” which is pretty much exactly like Poem Club except that every month I sent a handmade zine. (See above.) I had less than a thousand Instagram followers when I launched Zine Club and I think the most members I ever had in one month was ten. Maybe nine. And I knew all of them. Comparatively it was a failure¹, but I did it for a year and I learned a lot. And it was fun! I still have the collection of zines I made that year.

3. While I did have an audience (large to some, small to others) when I started Poem Club, the vast majority of the people who subscribed weren’t people following me. They were strangers who saw the video and were compelled to join the club, and/or follow me.

It makes sense to think that the project was successful because I had an audience. But in reality, the project was successful, because the video was successful.² The video helped me find new people who resonated with the project. Which then grew the number of people following me. Which in turn continues to push the video out to more people. It’s a circular thing.

It’s interesting that this comment came through on the TikTok post. To be honest, the video performed better on Instagram. I could have only posted to Instagram—a platform where I had a much smaller audience—and I still would have had to cap the Poem Club members.

Starting the project and talking about it is what made it successful. It wouldn’t have happened at all if I would have waited until I thought I was going to succeed.

To “but also” point one from above, the only reason I have an audience at all is because I post (as my friend Evangeline said) a shit ton of other videos. Most of them don’t do well. Most of them flop. I’ve been posting on TikTok for over three years. Instagram for over a decade. I keep going even when the views/followers/likes aren’t there because I’m still here making art and I like talking about it. I like shouting into the void about it because it makes it more real to me. Art should live in the world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this horoscope that I got when I was still in college. I used to wait for the new issue of the WW and flip to the back to read the little paragraph under “Leo”. (Btw it’s my birthday tomorrow.) This particular horoscope was from 2011ish, and I might still have it clipped out in my jewelry box or something. But I was able to pull it up from the internet archive with a few key words—free will leo poems grand canyon. Anyways. It reads:

LEO (July 23-Aug 22): “Publishing a volume of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo," said author Don Marquis, speaking from experience. Something you're considering, Leo, may seem to fit that description, too. It's a project or action or gift that you'd feel good about offering, but you also wonder whether it will generate the same buzz as that rose petal floating down into the Grand Canyon. Here's what I think: To the degree that you shed your attachment to making an impact, you will make the exact impact that matters most. Give yourself without any expectations.

I clipped this out when I was 19, living in my first apartment in Portland. Instagram was a baby and I didn’t have an account. TikTok wasn’t a thing. I still had my Blogspot blog. I had absolutely zero audience or reach, unless you counted the people in my studio critiques at school.

I saved the horoscope because I wanted the reminder that making art and sharing it was still worthwhile even when it felt like “dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo”. This metaphor has stuck with me because it’s such a good one for describing what it feels like to share a creative project. I’ve felt that way with every piece of art or writing I’ve shared—like it was most likely going to have no impact at all. I’ve shared things secretly hoping they would take off or someone would buy them. I’ve stopped myself from sharing things because I didn’t think they would. I’ve told myself no before the world could, so many times.

I put Poem Club online while sitting alone in my studio. I genuinely didn’t know if anyone would subscribe. It was nerve wracking adding the link to my website; my heart was beating so fast. I’m not lying when I say that this is the very first time I’ve ever launched something without getting feedback or overthinking about if I should or shouldn’t do it. I’m not decisive and I tend to doubt myself and downplay my abilities.

There were no expectations that it would have any subscribers, make any actual money, or mean anything to anyone. Like my 2011 horoscope advised (only 13 years later) I shed all of my attachments to making an impact. If it was or wasn’t successful wasn’t the most important thing to me. Doing it was.

The most true answer to the comment that I got on TikTok is that yes, I would absolutely do this even if I didn’t have an audience. Maybe it wouldn’t be paying my bills, or reaching thousands of people. But I wasn’t expecting it to, or counting on it. No matter what happens with Poem Club (after all, it’s only in it’s second month) or any of my other projects—no matter if I lose all my followers or TikTok gets banned—I’m still going to be making art and posting it online. I already have been, for a long time before anyone was around to witness it.

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Hi loves—

A few quick notes:

I’m having a short art sale to celebrate my Birthday! All original paintings, stickers, and zines are 33% off because I’m turning 33 tomorrow! Absolutely no pressure to buy anything but I’d be dumb to not put the info in my own Substack.

Click here if you want to shop the Birthday Sale! Live through tomorrow, 7/30

Poem Club membership will remain closed for August and will hopefully reopen in September! I’ll be shouting about it everywhere when it does. <3

Xo,

B

1. By failure I mean, it didn’t blow up or make me any real money (I actually probably lost money doing Zine Club lol) Of course doesn’t mean it was a failure across the board.

2. You can definitely argue the “But also” that the video was only successful because I had an audience when I posted it. To that I say, why aren’t all the videos I post successful? You gotta start somewhere, and one video can definitely generate an audience. (Whether they’re engaged or not is a different story.)