The Creatives Conundrum

What if it was all a sham?
What if the only reason people bought my books was because they were my friends. You can tell by this last sentence that sales are not exactly large. Or even mediocre. In fact, sales are terrible.
Ideas to boost my sales are plentiful. What you need to do is buy loads of your own books and tour the literary festivals doing fringe events. You need a publisher! You need a literary agent!! You need to get off your arse and do something more like it.
What if the kind words were just that?
What if they really thought my last book was 'an amateur, self indulgent pile of crap but we can't bring ourselves to tell him'.
They might all be the same. I may not have grown as a writer. I may not actually be a writer but a bloke who thinks he's a writer.
Hounded by the recurring self doubt of 'what if'. Sat like an over critical Jimny Cricket not pricking my conscience but stealing my self confidence.
A writer, a good writer puts part of him/herself into every book. They use characters, situations, plots to give of themselves.
A poet condenses this and throws it out there.
The writer waits for responses. They wait for opinions and reflections.
'Yeah, its good' is no good.
'I didn't know you could write poems' is troubling. That might mean you can write or actually you still cannot.
Vulnerability is the state that many creative folks exist in. We put our work out there and hope someone engages with it. Some of us want to then know why because like is not enough.
It takes courage to stand up in front of a room and sing, speak, show a painting/photograph/film/installation. It lays you bare, exposed to opinion. But we need that opinion to inform us. We need constructive comments not glib dismissal because that is as corrosive as 'Yeah its good'.
The audience never truly know what the artist/musician/poet/writer was thinking when they produced their work. The audience engage for different reasons. They may smile at a painting without attempting to explain what the artist was expressing. They may listen to a poem captivated by the rhythm but not words. A writer may convey the reader or listener back to long forgotten summers when there were only three channels on TV and Crispy Pancakes were gourmet foods.
This writer writes not because someone wants me to. I write because I want to. I publish because I want to share this. But that is the scary step. Writing your thoughts down and keeping them to yourself is safe. The minute others read your words its dangerous.
I write as a form of self expression. It is ultimately up to you how you respond but please don't tell me what you think I want to hear.