Ayun Halliday - Creative, Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto

Creative, Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto

All text is Ayun Halliday, 2022

This edition is by Microcosm Publishing, 2022

Cover design by Joe Biel and Ayun Halliday

Edited by Alexis Orgera

First Printing, May 10, 2022

For a catalog, write

Microcosm Publishing

2752 N. Williams Ave

Portland, OR 97227

or visit Microcosm.Pub/SmallPotato

eBook ISBN 9781648410833

This is Microcosm #489

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Keep an eye out for The Creative, Not Famous Workbook coming in Fall 2022!

Microcosm Publishing is Portlands most diversified publishing house and distributor with a focus on the colorful, authentic, and empowering. Our books and zines have put your power in your hands since 1996, equipping readers to make positive changes in their lives and in the world around them. Microcosm emphasizes skill-building, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging conventional publishing wisdom with books and bookettes about DIY skills, food, bicycling, gender, self-care, and social justice. What was once a distro and record label was started by Joe Biel in his bedroom and has become among the oldest independent publishing houses in Portland, OR. We are a politically moderate, centrist publisher in a world that has inched to the right for the past 80 years.

Global labor conditions are bad, and our roots in industrial Cleveland in the 70s and 80s made us appreciate the need to treat workers right. Therefore, our books are MADE IN THE USA.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Disclaimer

Who You Calling Small Potatoes?

Potatoes Defined

THE PERKS OF BEING A SMALL POTATO

Creative Control

Be Yourself

Your Time is YOUR Time

Make What You Want

Answer to Yourself

Fly Under the Radar

Connect with Like-Minded Humans

PAYING THE BILLS

Working for Free

Pay Your People

Managing Your Money

THE PRACTICE

Doin It

Jotting: Notebook vs. Phone

Your Daily Journal

Sharing Your Diary: A Cautionary Tale

A Consistent Practice

Sustaining Interest

Bribe Yourself for a Good Cause

Creatures of Habit

Creative Bingers

Collaboration

Deadlines

Meditation

Social Media vs. Productivity

The Small Potato System

Motivation

GET 'ER DONE

Finish That Thing

Create Accountability

Oh Look! An Escape Hatch!

When to Lock the Escape Hatch

Dont Commit Til You Know the Deal

Its Okay to Fail!

Moldy Old Goals

Goals to Hold Onto

LIFE HAPPENS

When Shit Hits Fan

Parenthood

The Worlds Indifference

Pull Yourself out of That Funk

Use Others to Pull You Up out of That Funk

YOUR WORK IN THE WORLD

Savoring Small Encouragements

Giving Small Encouragements

Surviving Criticism

Practice Compassionate Criticism

Bad Crowds

Take a Compliment

Clueless Fans

THE WORLD OF SELF-DOUBT

Quit Yer Bitchin

Pie Is for Sharing

Someone Elses Shoes

Managing Jealousy

DEFINING SUCCESS

Get Rid of Your Baggage

The Tootsie Pop of Fame

False Modesty, the Worst Kind of Humility

If You Had One Wish

Okay, How about Three Wishes?

Make or Break Tater Traits

BETTER TOGETHER

Growing Community

Group Efforts

LEARNING

Is That Diploma Worth It?

Learning on the Job

Teaching

Taking Classes

Taking Classes on a Students Budget

PROMOTING YOUR WORK

Social Media

Bang Your Own Drum

In with the In Crowd

Patreon!

Playing Store

Sandwich Board

The Magic Bus

Be a Good Guest

Table Talk: Festivals

Public Reckoning

Grant Applications

YOUR WORK FOR POSTERITY

Make Copies!

Historical Society

Archives

MANIFESTO TO MOVEMENT

PARTING GIFTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Contributing Comrades

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Art is sending the message that life has merit, that people have merit. I think we should see things that make us all want to go out and live better and share the good things we have seen. I think we should, without ever meeting, let it be known that we are here to support and protect each other.

Marlon Brando in an interview with James Grissom

F ew among us set out to be a small potato.

Most of us go into the arts with some sort of vague (or explicit) hope that our efforts will be noticed and rewarded. That we will be deemed worthy in a quantifiable, highly public way. That its only a matter of time.

Turns out cookies rarely crumble that way.

Looking at it through the lens of history, most artists, performers, musicians, writers, filmmakers, dancers, and clowns have not been big bananas but, rather, small potatoes, strivers who dont abandon their creative pursuits just because they fail to become rich and famous.

Imagine that...

How many celebrities could muster the grit to persist in the face of such crushing public indifference?

The secrets spilled on these pages are spilled by small potatoes, for small potatoes.

My hunch is this book will best serve those whove logged at least a decades creative toil without clearing the arbitrary bar that constitutes making it in the eyes of the public, press, parents friends, and occasionally, parents themselves.

If you are a creative, freshly minted adult who has just received this book as some sort of well-intended, or possibly passive-aggressive graduation gift, we hope you will not hold it against us.

One day in the not too distant future, you may find yourself in need of our philosophical musings, universal admissions, and hot small potato tips.

Whenever youre ready... gooba gabba, we accept you.

There are so many excellent things about being a small potato! Also days when it feels pretty dismal, and its those days that pointed to the need for this manifesto. We small potatoes contain multitudes, to cop a phrase from Walt Whitman.

The small potato enterprise thats brought me the most consistent satisfaction is The East Village Inky , a handwritten, hand-illustrated autobiographical zine that Ive published more or less regularly since 1998.

But Ive also dipped my toes into songwriting, filmmaking, a daily photography project, animation, puppets... lately, I traffic in comics, essays, and a type of theater of interest to only a handful of the theater-going populace (which is really saying something).