tooth soup

Note to potential readers–I’m not dA bashing here. Kicking up drama is for people who are either bored, or naturally inclined to do so. I am neither. This article was written for the purposes of discussion of what deviantART is and isn’t. It focuses mainly on the literature section of dA, as this is the one I am most familiar with. Visual arts might as well be on another planet as far as literature on dA is concerned. The dynamics are utterly different and cannot be applied to each other. So if you are a visual artist reading this, there might be some happy occasions whereby you can identify with what is being said, but you may want to skip over the majority of it, as it really doesn’t apply to you. That disclaimer finished, let’s move on.

Recently I was asked by a real life writer friend of mine whether I thought deviantART was worth signing up to in order to help improve his craft. Being my usual verbose self, I said, “Yeah, I guess.” It got me thinking though, as to what were the pros and cons of joining up to deviantART and jumping into the community that is hosted there. For his benefit (and the benefit of filling up a journal entry) I decided to make this post about how I went through the experience of the deviantART literature (dAlit for short) community. I’m going to focus on the writing side of things because, as noted in the disclaimer, I’m not a drama queen. That said, dA in general, and specifically dAlit, undergoes a fucking TONNE of drama. And it’s incredibly difficult to avoid this. But if you stay focused and continue to chant the internet mantra (‘It’s only the internet, it’s only the internet’) you’ll be fine.

Okay, so let’s start with what I believe is the best case scenario for joining deviantART. Meet little Johnny. Johnny’s writing has never been published, his work isn’t up to publishing standard, and his entire body of work is made up of 50% stories that he wrote in high school and 50% unfinished starts of novels. To put it bluntly, little Johnny stinks. But on the plus side he’s enthusiastic, has some good ideas up his sleeve, and wants to learn. He is perfect for the deviantART literature community.

But before he dons his hazchem suit and leaps into the fray, here are a few important things that we need to remind him about:

• deviantART is a community. This means that, like any community involving us humans, it’s easy to be left behind if you don’t fit in. Thankfully dA is so monstrously big that it’s fairly easy to find your own clique. However…

• You need to interact with the community for it to interact with you. Go to the big players in the community, look at what clubs and chats they support and start getting involved. However…

• For the love of god, don’t pester people to look at your work. If you’re new on the block and you’re friendly, chances are people will ask if you have anything to look at. We know you’re eager, we know you’re enthusiastic, but all that will translate into over chats and messages is plain annoying.

• Don’t flood your proper gallery. It’s there, and it’s infinite, but so is your ‘scraps’ gallery. Pick the best 5% of all your work and post it up in your proper gallery. Leave the rest on your hard drive, or if you’re really desperate to sit there and upload things, put it in scraps.

That’s about all little Johnny needs to start off in dAlit. Off you go little Johnny! Heh, what a good kid. He sucks, man does he suck, but he’s happy to be a part of something. I didn’t want to say it while he was here before, but chances are that he’ll get slightly caught up in the community side. The great thing about dA is that it encourages interaction between artists, but that interaction can also distract you from getting work done. If you’re talking with writers, that’s as good as writing, right? Mm, yes and no. There’s a lot to be learned from talking shop, not to mention that it’s really great fun, but sooner or later Johnny’s going to have to sit down and actually write something. Let’s leave him to it and come back in a few months.

[much time passes]

Well it’s been six months and wow, Johnny has improved. He’s gotten stuck into the community and he’s had some minor hits and misses to his name. His grammar and spelling is just about up to scratch, and people are starting to take him more seriously. Accordingly, he’s all heads down bums up trying to get some serious writing done. And when he does that he’ll be wanting to get some honest feedback from people. Now, the problem with dAlit is that honest critique is something that is really hard to come by. Which isn’t to say that you can’t get critique. But there are a few things you should keep in mind:

• 99% of the critique you will get is from amateurs. They aren’t professional editors. Sure, they may write a column or two for their local newspaper, or run a journal at their university. That doesn’t make them pros. Consider this.
• Chances are that (unless someone comes along by random accident and gives you a critique) the people that are critiquing you will be people that have come to watch your progress over the months. That means that they already have a predisposition to your writing. Why watch* someone if you don’t like them?
• As a consequence of the point above,the critter and you are most likely friendly. Now, I’m not saying that people can’t be critical of each other’s work and still be friends–a lot of friendships are stronger because of it. However, writers, and in particular writers who post their work up on deviantART, are pretty protective of their writing. So in order to stay friendly, you might see “I think it needs a bit of fine tuning, but it was interesting good luck go fix it”.

That last point is an obvious stickler for Johnny. He really wants to get some good pointers. He knows his writing isn’t up to publication quality, but he can’t find anyone that will say “This part was crap, but here’s the ways in which to fix it”. He starts getting a little frustrated with the generic ‘this is good, I liked it!’ comments. He starts to get *dum dum dum* srs.

A less obvious sticking point is the second dot in the list. By having friends in the dAlit community, having people who comment on his work positively, Johnny, whether consciously or unconsciously, might be tempted to start writing towards them. Writing with audience in mind is okay, some authors do it exclusively and are very successful. But I’ve always been suspicious of it. Writing for someone else, with praise from a certain group of people as your eventual goal, is something I see as destructive to your writing.

Johnny’s next move is to find the kind of people that will give him great, honest, reasoned critique for him to work off of. We’ll give him a month or so to do that. Go Johnny, go!

[more time passes]

Well it’s now a month or so since we saw Johnny and it looks like he’s found himself a handful of people that are prepared to give him some honest, useful feedback on his work. He’s come to recognise what his strengths and weaknesses are in his writing, and he appreciates when his fellows point them out for him to fix. This is pretty much the plateau point on dA. If he keeps his head level and continues to work on his writing, he’ll likely be able to improve his writing up to publication standard. Generally speaking there’s not a lot more that you can hope to get out of it on the writing side of things, bar the fuzzy feeling of receiving a DD (Daily Deviation Award), or being recognised by randoms as ‘the guy that wrote <blah story>’. Johnny’s level of involvement in dA will probably rise and fall as he goes through patches of motivation. He’ll stay around, but he’ll also be looking for other sources of learning.

* * *

So that’s it really. Yes, for those sitting there looking askance at the screen, Little Johnny is essentially embodying my journey through deviantART over the past three years (the month estimates there are if he’s really focused, like I wasn’t). The best piece of advice that I could offer with deviantART is that it has enormous power to connect you with other writers, and it can be great to motivate you if you lack the willpower to just sit down and write. The downside is that, like all communities (facebook, myspace, etc.), it has the potential to distract you for hours and hours on end. If you are easily distracted, and you will know damn well if you are, be warned. All this having been said, I do believe that without deviantART I would not have the skills I have today. My grammar, spelling, secntence structure, plotting, and basic ability to think about stories has improved tenfold since I started there. I’ve been exposed to some great poetry and prose and the great young (and older) people behind it. It has definitely been a positive influence on my writing, but it’s not for everyone.

* The term ‘watch’ here is a function of deviantART whereby you are notified each time the person uploads a new piece of art.

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