We’re back! (Well, almost…)

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Hi, friend.

Did you think we were done?

Far from it, I’m afraid.

First thing’s first: Have you heard the trailer to this upcoming season of the podcast? I bet you haven’t. And it just might surprise you a little. Tune in and start getting excited.

Next up: I saw a movie recently; it was a sequel-reboot of a franchise I grew up with, and I found myself feeling tired by the filmmakers’ attempts to make an old thing seem new. That’s impossible. New wine in old wineskins just doesn’t work.

So it is, it seems, with our lives and with our work. We cannot put new stuff in an old container and vice versa. If we want to do a new thing, we have to create a new space for that work to happen. And that space is not your desk or house or cul-de-sac; it’s you.

The hardest part of ushering a new season in life is to actually become a new person, one worthy of whatever change you want to create. Sequels suck. Nobody wants Part II of a story that was complete in the first place. The only time a sequel ever works is when it ignores the past, using it as a jumping-off point into the real story, not as a call-back to something nostalgic.

So what does this mean, exactly?

It means we’re back… almost.

It means I’ve been busily clearing the decks for a new thing to happen.

It means I am slowly building a new life to make room for everything I want to express.

And most importantly, it means that if you want to create new work, quite possibly the best you’ve ever done, it cannot be a mere continuation of what has come before. It has to be more than another boring reboot (“this time, it’s different!”). It has to be something fresh and new, something we’ve never seen before; and yes, maybe it has the same name or personage attached to it. But it is new.

And to create that new thing, you yourself have to become something other than what you’ve been. The caterpillar must die to become the butterfly. What we were must become less so that what we could be can become greater. It is this recession into the darkness that creates the blank page for creative work to happen.

In my world, I’ve been letting go of the world of online courses and personal branding and other people’s expectations. And the butterfly that’s emerging is something exciting and unknown, yet altogether familiar.

Practically speaking, I’ve been building a boutique ghostwriting and editing agency with my team. It’s been an interesting season of work, one in which I am learning once again how to do a brand new thing. We’ve been spending months figuring out how we want to work on books and what that looks like.

We’ve launched a beta version of our website, linked above, and if you’re a writer looking for work or an author looking for a book, you might want to check it out.

And, as above, we’ve got a new season of the HC podcast coming your way starting mid-March. We’re dusting off the old recording studio and bringing you some fresh tape. We’re also bringing back the seasonal newsletter with some new ideas on what it means to be part of the Creator Economy.

So, consider this fair warning: for the next few months, we’ll be hitting your inbox again every Tuesday with a new newsletter (is that redundant?) and a brand new podcast.

This isn’t Part II. It’s not another lame sequel. This time, we’re gonna do it completely differently, surprising ourselves along the way. Because is that not the purity of the creative process? To have the audacity to try something the way it’s never been done before?

There’s this great scene from a movie called “Eddie and the Cruisers,” which I watched with my dad while growing up. The premise of the film is that this rock-and-roller named Eddie (think James Dean meets Bruce Springsteen) hits it big with his first album, gets bored with fame, and tries to top himself—only to get disillusioned with the whole process of one-upping himself. He ends up disappearing into obscurity. The story itself is reminiscent of the life of J.D. Salinger or even the career of Arthur Rimbaud. In fact, the sophomore record Eddie is recording in the movie is called “Season in Hell.”

Anyway, in the movie, the band breaks up over a recording session in which the lead singer is trying to push the group into new territory. After a big hit, they either have to give the fans what they want or… do something else. This scene, after which Eddie storms out of the recording studio, has always resonated with me:

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Doc Robbins: Are you crazy? We had the money in our hands and you blew it. You blew it!

Sal Amato: Eddie, you’re wrong! You’re wrong! Now listen to me, I love you. I’ve known you longer than anyone else. But you’re wrong. They want “On the Dark Side”! Why are we giving them some damn opera? I don’t even know what you’re after!

Eddie Wilson: I want something great. I want something that nobody’s ever done before!

Sal: Why? We ain’t great. We’re just some guys from Jersey.

Eddie: If you can’t be great, then there’s no sense in ever playing music again, Sal.

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We all have seasons in hell, moments where what is reasonable collides with what could be great. And many of us find ourselves consumed by this season, the seeming inevitability of it all. This is our life, and it is hard; we are forced to compromise what we know for the sake of what most people can understand. And any creator will tell you this is the worst of all suffering: to be less than you know you could be.

It is inconceivable; or at very least, if we are forced to conform, something of ourselves dies with that decision. Is it possible to continue surprising yourself with a new and interesting world, to keep yourself entertained and maybe even impressed? Can you be successful and artistically integrous?

It’s hard to say, but I’d certainly like to try.

This is the stuff that seems to kill poets and take out novelists too early in the game. It is the struggle that has caused more than one genius to die slowly by the bottle or quickly by a self-induced trigger. Let’s not make light of it: staring in the face of your own inadequacy can kill a person. Let’s be kind to ourselves as we attempt to do something greater than what we did yesterday… or a decade ago.

It’s been five years since my last book. And as egotistical as it is, I find solace in the writers who have come before me and wrestled with their own sense of “what’s the point?” To say a thing, I think, has very little to do with the thing that is said. And when you are praised for what you said instead of for the act of saying a thing, what hope is there?

We create not for the sake of the creation or even for the audience but for the act of creating. This is why we do what we do and why we can never stop seeking greatness.

More soon,

Jeff

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​A while back, if I remember right, my life was one long party where all hearts were open wide, where all wines kept flowing.

One night, I sat Beauty down on my lap.—And I found her galling.—And I roughed her up.

I armed myself against justice.

I ran away. O witches, O misery, O hatred, my treasure’s been turned over to you!

I managed to make every trace of human hope vanish from my mind. I pounced on every joy like a ferocious animal eager to strangle it.

I called for executioners so that, while dying, I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called for plagues to choke me with sand, with blood. Bad luck was my god. I stretched out in the muck. I dried myself in the air of crime. And I played tricks on insanity.

And Spring brought me the frightening laugh of the idiot.

So, just recently, when I found myself on the brink of the final *squawk!* it dawned on me to look again for the key to that ancient party where I might find my appetite once more.

Charity is that key.—This inspiration proves I was dreaming!

“You’ll always be a hyena etc. . . ,” yells the devil, who’d crowned me with such pretty poppies. “Deserve death with all your appetites, your selfishness, and all the capital sins!”

Ah! I’ve been through too much:

-But, sweet Satan, I beg of you, a less blazing eye!

and while waiting for the new little cowardly gestures yet to come,

since you like an absence of descriptive or didactic skills in a writer,

let me rip out these few ghastly pages from my notebook of the damned.

—Arthur Rimbaud

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