Hello, friends.
I got through last week only mildly skinned and singed. Meetings and meetings that were like puppet shows and lots of trying to catch up on stuff. This week will also be busier than I’d like, with a work-related day trip on Tuesday and then an after school meeting on Wednesday (that’s really just going to be mandatory planning time, the kind of thing that would be perfect for PD days instead of the stuff we’re usually assigned to)…next week’s Spring Vacation can’t come soon enough.
I attended the Somerset Public Library Author Fair yesterday, which was fun. I’ll write about it a bit below.
Welcome to the 168th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and creativity. If you’re a reader who subscribes via Substack, my website, or Patreon, your encouragement helps motivate me. I’m not breaking any records but I’m thankful to have any audience.
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Because of the soul-sucking—no, I meant mind-numbing—er…also, no…let’s see…busy week related to the Day Job, not much writing work got done, except for working on designs for the signs I would use for the Author Fair.
I designed and printed out some signs that, once placed in their frames, I quickly disliked. Pamela also thought they needed work. So, Friday I redesigned the signs…
…and we were much happier with them.
The 15 copies of The Monster in the Closet that I ordered through the publisher did not get here on time for the Author Fair, luckily the three copies I ordered through Amazon did arrive on time, so I was able to bring them with me so it wasn’t a total bust. The 15 copies arrived today, so I’ll have some for other events, assuming I can scrounge some up.
The Author Fair at the Somerset Public Library was a lot of fun. I got to reconnect with Brennan LaFaro, which was a blast.
The event was partly put together by my friend, Laura LaTour, whom I’ve known for 23 years since I began working at a local independent bookstore (that’s been gone for a long time now) and who has been a vocal champion of books and writers for even longer, having been the publicist bringing authors into the bookstore long before I began working there. She’s also been a big supporter who’s encouraged me and has had more faith in me and my work than I have in myself.
The “Oh, the Horror!” panel was fun. I chatted with Laura, Brennan, Ricardo Rebelo, Jason Parent, and Harold Sipe and a room full of people who asked some really good questions. I remembered that I’ve done one other panel before this, back in 2011, I think, for a Dartmouth Public Library event, but it wasn’t as focused as this one was.
Photo by G. Gauthier
I got to meet a few new readers, which was terrific, and overall had a good time. I’m hoping they’ll do another one next year and that I’m invited to that as well.
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This past week was wild. I kept seeing and hearing about creativity as a center of many conversations from the Day Job, where I teach in a creative career-technical program, to the author fair I attended. Between those personal experiences and seeing how the world is handling the importance of creativity, I’m in a weird headspace.
Let me risk everything and talk about the Day Job for a moment, because you can’t make this shit up. As I said, I teach in a creative program with five other teachers. All of us are either almost- or bona-fide 20-year veterans, teaching most of our careers in this (or a similar) creative program. Art is part of what we teach. So are design and communications and filmmaking and animation and all the rest. We were two different programs at one point, recently merged together. For all the creativity that is espoused in team meetings, I feel as though there isn’t as much creative thinking as one might think. The most vocal of All Things Creative, who is always making it seem as though they—and they alone—understand the creative mindset in students and everything else, took it on themselves to design a curriculum for everybody.
They used AI.
I mean…the most creative thing a teacher gets to do is create curriculum. But…let’s feed in what we want and then edit it and—voila!
That’s not to mention their rejection of every idea that’s not theirs or aligns with theirs. There’s also the teacher who worked in a creative medium that isn’t creative at all and has spent 18+ years saying they can only do one thing who can suddenly do everything, but that’s a different story for another time. The point is, the creativity thrown out to come up with ways to undermine everyone could be put to use in actually making the program stronger? Listening to others? Taking new ideas?
But that’s just a microcosm of the greater world. The worlds needs and thrives with creativity yet are more and more willing to kill it. They don’t want to pay writers, artists, editors, web designers, and all the rest to do their jobs because they can plug in a prompt and see what happens.
As time passes, it’s becoming more apparent that everything creative is not taken seriously. It’s also something that many creatives are making more difficult for themselves.
What I love about art and creativity is that anyone can partake in it. Poor, rich, everywhere in between. Black, white, and everyone else. Yeah, some art is more expensive than others but at its most basic a person can pick up a pencil and a piece of paper and write or draw. That may be an oversimplification but I don’t think it entirely is.
We need creativity more now than ever before. We need more stories, more music, more art. If those who are supposed to be torch bearers for the arts aren’t practicing them with all their own abilities, if they’re too busy gatekeeping to be creating, then they’re helping the Enemies of Art and Creativity by polluting the creative waters, that will only end up poisoning creative people, consumer of the arts—everyone. And that’s how we all lose everything.
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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