Writer's Tribute

I am going to preface this piece with what I feel art is before I continue. I feel it is important to fully understand this in order to grasp the thoughts I am pointing you to.

Art is expression. Art takes you from your life, from your world and transports you to the artists world. Or at least the way this world is seen by the artists. We all have our own world, each of us living our lives, focused on the things we do each day never really taking time to consider what another person is doing in their world. I guess this is where the saying, "Walk a mile in another persons shoes", comes from. Quality art will feel as though a piece of the persons essence has been engraved into the material. It is an expression of their world with the intention of engraving some of it onto you.

Art is beautiful. Not so shallow as to be what a great deal of society would consider beautiful, skin deep looks coupled with a positive attitude. Beautiful has in transcending time. Beautiful as in taking the art that an artist has created, sharing it with the world and all those that have interacted with this art having some form of physical, mental or spiritual reaction to it.

Art is appealing. An artist may look at their work and see or feel there is more that needs to be done. May also feel as though it may never be good enough to share.

I am one of those people and this is actually the reason I am writing this now. My name is Vince Comegys-Davis. Fairly recently I began producing an audio drama called Out of the Ashes. Originally I wrote the script to be a story for a scholarship contest. Now I've long since been finished with college and am enjoying my time with my family. I had forgotten all about the story until one day while visiting my mother, she told me she had found a box of my old stuff. In there was my old story notebook. I was excited and caught the bug once again to begin creating. I thought about turning it into a screenplay but had been falling in love with audio dramas at the same time of this old discovery. So my mind had been made up to do an audio drama. So I created the script, found some actors, made the first season and put it out.

Let me tell you it was frightening. Putting myself out there like that. It's like baring your soul to the world and allowing them criticize everything about you. Which is what happened. After a few months the show had started getting a following and getting more listens until one day it got a one star review. That's right the dreaded one star. The person even said something along the lines of "Everything is terrible. You should just stop and not make any more shows."

I was devastated.

I was so down on myself, it even got to a point that I thought about stopping. But then I got a 5 star review from someone who said they loved it. Then another and another. So how does this all tie into what I said above?

As writers, we tell a story or we write our thoughts down and share with the world in the hopes that it will impact someone. As writers we aim to be expressive, we aim to be beautiful and we aim to be appealing. We are artists! Many people when they think of art they think of paintings but we know art is so much more because we do it everyday. This piece is my tribute to you. The Writers. When you finish a piece and you put it out there for the world to see, like me, you may get some people who look at your writing and say it's terrible or it sucks. I want you to remember this, it's not about you. That review is about them. Your art didn't resonate with that individual but there are plenty of fish in the sea.

While one person didn't like what you said, there are 10 others who loved it and want to see more from you. So pick yourself up and do more of this art that you love.