The pressure to produce: a conversation with Georgie Vestey (part 2)
Georgie’s creative process involves old-fashioned cutting and pasting
This is the second part of my interview with independent podcaster Georgie Vestey, host of Dead Honest. You can read part one here.
We start off by discussing the tyranny of the production schedule, or at least that’s how it feels to me. But Georgie has wisely found a way to deal with it. In short, she doesn’t. She has produced two seasons of Dead Honest, and doesn’t pressure herself to get on with the next one.
What follows is an edited version of our candid conversation.
Georgie Vestey: I have been very clear about the fact that I cannot give myself a schedule. I cannot produce something every month or every two weeks. I don't have the bandwidth creatively to do that. I tend to produce six episodes all at once [working over many months]. And then I release them, because the pressure of having to come back to it and come back to it on a regular basis, I find it just kills the passion and it becomes mechanical.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: It does! I wish in 2012 [when I started my show] the concept of seasons had existed, but it didn’t. I burn out about two times a year. I hit a wall. The pressure to produce gets me burnt out and I don’t care any more, so I need time to re-calibrate.
Georgie Vestey: It’s interesting. We can be incredibly punishing as self-creators. We are the worst boss that we've ever worked for sometimes. And our impatience with ourselves can be so unforgiving. Particularly if you are used to seeing yourself as being reasonably competent, you become a very tough task master.
I have come to realise that trying to force through will – which is an energy I'm always used to using and always stood me in good stead, or so I thought – doesn’t work when it comes to extending my creative bandwidth. That really does have to come when it comes. And when I try and push it, I can manifest it, but it’s manifested in a way that's often quite desiccated and painful for the people I have to live with. And so now I'm letting some of that stuff go. And for the last four months, I have done nothing on Dead Honest, really nothing. I honestly didn't have any idea whether I'd do another series, I wasn't giving myself any pressure…and only over the last week little shoots are coming up and I’m beginning to get a bit excited. But that doesn’t mean I’m working on it five days a week. If I did, it would be like trying to put a big heat lamp onto a bowl and go, ‘come on, grow you bastard, grow!’ It can't. Or it can, but it won't be strong and it won't be of itself. It'll be forced.
We continued to talk about the conventional production schedule, and how Georgie admires podcasters like Erica Heilman and Lea Thau who produce varied shows when they want, not adhering to a strict schedule.
Georgie Vestey: This thing of pumping it out one way, week after another week after another, I'm getting to that point of how much more can these people have to say on a weekly basis? I would prefer them to shut up for six months and come back to me when they've done some more work.
Quality I think is going to become the hallmark of what's going to set people apart in the future, not consistency.
All those rules, I think, are out the window…that whole thing of a schedule and it's got to be done a certain way? No, that doesn't have to happen anymore. I mean, I do 20-minute episodes because I feel that's appropriate to my content. But also at that time, when I started Dead Honest, it was also considered a respectful time for people on their commutes, whoever's commuting. But now there are many more longer podcasts, so let's revel in the fact that we don't have to be constrained by those old-fashioned models, and create the models that suit our creativity best and honor that creativity, not the other way around.
Finally, we talked about the loneliness a lot of independent podcasters can feel, and what Georgie has done to combat that feeling of working in a vacuum.
Georgie Vestey: Sometimes I'm asked to talk to people about podcasting and starting your podcast. And I must sound like the most depressing person, because I'm just like, this is hard. This is gonna be hard. And some days you are going to want to throw your computer out the window and think ‘who am I to even think that I could do this?’ It’s going to really challenge your sense of self-worth because it is so lonely a lot of the time. And if you are surrounded by people who are producing at a certain level, because of the support they get from the networks that they're involved with or the production companies or whatever, that makes you feel even smaller and even less successful and even more downbeat.
So the thing I've found that's been really helpful for me with Dead Honest, and one of the key things I've felt has kept me going, is that I have what I call a micro-mentor.
It's a girlfriend of mine who I met at a podcasting festival; we didn't know each other before that. She's also developing a podcast, which is going to be amazing when it comes out. And between us, we have to keep each other accountable. We talk every Thursday afternoon, and when I'm feeling like the biggest loser, she reassures me that I'm not the biggest loser and keeps a sense of perspective. It just has been the most wonderfully reassuring and supportive space that I've created around my process.
When we are doing creative projects, to be doing it in parallel with someone else who's got a similar sense of values, a similar sensibility…but they also have days when they aren't working as well as they hoped, or they didn't produce as much as they thought they would that week, it’s so helpful. And just that gentle encouragement, which we never give ourselves - I think we genuinely do need to get that from other people.
I’m very proactive about telling other people to find a micro-mentor: find someone else who can walk that path with you.
Georgie Vestey is the creator and host of the podcast Dead Honest.