Working With What You Have

This week's creative output: making time work for me.

I'm sure I've ranted about this before but despite having 3.8M YouTube subscribers, I'm a terrible 'YouTuber'.

I struggle with making actual, long form 'YouTube videos'. I just don't have the time to script, film, and edit them on top of my ongoing production work.

But what is a 'YouTuber' anyway?

If my strengths are making short form videos and educating about the process, then why am I defining my weakness as not having the time to make longer videos simply because that's what other people do?

A new plan

Why not scrap the idea of 'actual YouTube videos' altogether?

Given that I'm constantly in production, wouldn't it be interesting to get a real-time look into the messiness of that process, rather than some slickly edited retrospective?

And if I only had to spend 10 minutes per week giving a show-and-tell of what I'm up to, wouldn't that side step the issue of not having enough time?

Couldn't I just live stream that to my YouTube audience?

…yes!

So that's the plan.

Every Friday, I'll live stream to YouTube for 10 minutes using what I'm actually working on to educate young filmmakers and content creators. And the videos will live in an ongoing playlist.

This example from last week happened when I hadn't quite formed the idea of keeping it under 10 minutes, so it's a bit clunky and awkward, but better to start than to start perfect:

🎤 On the Podcast

This week on How Do Artists Make Money? I spoke to author Joey Kidney.

We've both been at this social media thing for over a decade, but where my art exists purely on social media, Joey's had to navigate it both as a means of income and promoting his books.

It was interesting hearing him compare the self-publishing and traditional book publishing worlds, as well as how some of his more profitable business ventures (like a wedding vow writing service) came from listening to his core audience.