scan artist = scanner + scam artist
According to Barbara Sher in her book Refuse to Choose:
Scanners love to read and write, to fix and invent things, to design projects and
businesses, to cook and sing, and to create the perfect dinner party. (You’ll
notice I didn’t use the word “or,” because Scanners don’t love to do one thing or
the other; they love them all.) A Scanner might be fascinated with learning how to
play bridge or bocce, but once she gets good at it, she might never play it again.
… To Scanners the world is like a big candy store full of fascinating
opportunities, and all they want is to reach out and stuff their pockets.
scam artist: person who gains the confidence of someone in order to defraud them
When I create, I often feel like a fraud. I’m not really an artist. I’m not really a creator.
I just program computers and bake bread and knit and study ants and read tarot and I Ching and solve Sudoku and love science fiction and cook and teach the dog tricks and think of ways to do laundry better and remember which way each key turns in the lock and play games and program games and speak Esperanto and build and program in Second Life and grow vegetables and look at the stars in my telescope and am probably in the 99th percentile of 3×5 card and imported Japanese pen collectors.
Huh. The list is incomplete and it already sounds pretty creative. I’m definitely a Scanner. And maybe an Artist. What I’m lacking is a way to hold myself accountable for production.
For inspiration, it doesn’t get much better than Jonathan Coulton. He quit his tech job to become a songwriter and performer. He’s done really well. JoCo describes the beginning of his Thing A Week:
To keep the juices flowing, I am going to post one piece of work per week until
further notice. This may be a complete song, or it may be some kind of experimental
thing, a mashup, a remix, some audio of me eating cheese, who knows. Not every one
will be good, or even tolerable. Many of these things will not make any sense to
anyone but me, and some of them will certainly suck. But there will be one a week,
so that’s got to be worth something.
I’m going to adopt the Thing A Week practice. It worked really well for Mr. Coulton. Some of the songs he produced were genius (Re Your Brains). Some seemed kind of lame, but later turned into sensations (I’m looking about you, Mr. Fancy Pants). But he produced something every week, for 52 weeks.
That’s my plan. Each week I am going to publish some completed thing. It might be a Ruby program, or a loaf of bread, or a photo of fresh-picked green beans. It might even be art.
This week’s Thing is the scan artist blog. All done now. Come back next week.
The Morganthall family reunion is held on the second Saturday in July at Hagerstown City Park in Hagerstown Maryland.