We were lucky to catch up with Matt Pegas recently and have shared our conversation below.
Matt, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
Keeping creativity alive can be challenging in a culture that often feels so mechanized: focused exclusively on work, money, and results. Most of us are not in the position of the aristocrats of long ago who had the economic grounding or patronage to apply themselves to their passions full time and with abandon. Most of us must deal with demands of work and survival that end up using much of our time and energy.
The things I have found most helpful to keep creativity alive are openness and habit. Being open to potential sources of inspiration in day-to-day life (even in seemingly boring or banal things) is essential, as is being open and non-judgemental with yourself about your natural aesthetic responses to those inspirations. Art doesn’t have to fall under the obvious categories of painting, poetry, or music. Your life itself (and certainly any kind of work you are involved in) can become a creative act. I feel as engaged with creativity when I am writing personal and original work as when I am podcasting or helping others bring their visions to life. You have to go with the flow and lean into whatever work you feel called to in that moment. You can’t force anything (for pretentious or other reasons ) lest creativity and art end up feeling like a chore or burden.
That being said, habit is the other important part of the equation. It’s a fairly standard piece of advice but it’s true: you have to set the time aside on a habitual basis (whether it’s an hour before or after work, or whenever) where you know you’re going to move your fingers over the keyboard with a blank document open, or draw, or whatever your medium is. It’s important to apply some discipline even within what should be the very free-flowing enterprise of creativity. If you can harness both the fiery power of creativity and this grounding aspect of discipline, you’ll have achieved the kind of alchemy necessary to bring something new into the world. By embracing both openness and habit (free-flow and discipline) I’ve achieved great results. Sometimes even the limitations on your time and energy can be beneficial, as they force you to focus on the projects and means of expression that you feel the most called toward.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am a writer. I have published two books thus far– DRAGON DAY via a small press called Terror House in 2021, and THE BLACK ALBUM which I self-published through Amazon this year. I am also a podcaster, and I have been involved in several podcasts. The one I’d like to highlight here is called “Strange Flows”, which is dedicated mostly to conversations about art and creativity–very often interviews with authors, filmmakers, and the like.
The endeavor I am most enthusiastic about right now, though, is NEW RITUAL PRESS: an incipient publishing label for fiction and literary nonfiction, started by myself and a few colleagues. The origin story for NEW RITUAL involves Omar Quintanilla, Jr. (Mr. Omar King), who has been covered by Bold Journey and recommended me to the website. You could say Omar inspired me to create NEW RITUAL simply by 1) being a true artist with a distinctive voice and point of view (something I gleaned within moments of meeting him) and 2) having a manuscript he’d been shopping around to publishers, but wasn’t hearing back on.
Since I know a bit about book formatting and am familiar with the independent literary world, I’ve been encouraged in the past to venture into publishing. I never took the idea very seriously, however, because to my mind there was already one too many small presses vying for readership. I was thinking about it all wrong, though. Starting a small press doesn’t have to be (or simply be) an economic exercise, but can be thought of as an act of service: a way of sharing knowledge and expertise with folks whose work might not otherwise find a home. For me, it also feels like a natural extension of having kicked around the indie scene for a few years, with a few cool literary friends to show for it.
I’m not just talking about Omar here–although certainly working on his forthcoming, debut, collection of stories AN ODYSSEY OF DINGBATS! was a major impetus to start NEW RITUAL. For the record: Omar doesn’t need me. I think DINGBATS! is good enough that eventually someone else would have picked up on it and put it out–perhaps even someone with more clout and influence than myself. But when I met Omar in August he was raring and ready to go with his manuscript, and I had the means to help him, so it all felt fated.
I hope NEW RITUAL becomes a home for writers from a variety of backgrounds and walks of life. Part of my mission is to account for voices who may be left out even from the typical diversity and inclusion initiatives–people who don’t have the easiest time ingratiating themselves socially or fitting in with the “cool crowd”. Neurodiversity is part of this, as is welcoming people with points of view or areas of interest and fascination that may put them occasionally at odds with the parameters of good taste, polite society, or political correctness.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Firstly let me say I still think I am early in my own journey, or perhaps that the journey never truly ends. I studied the Tarot for a while and a major element of the “Fool’s Journey” narrative is how the path through life is as cyclical as it is progressive. The second we get to the end we are back at the beginning, re-entering The World stronger and with newfound wisdom, perhaps, but still fundamentally The Fool in that we don’t know what is ahead of us, and can only be certain that there will be new challenges. This process does not end until we die: and even then, some think that we are reborn in some literal or figurative sense.
That being said: I am turning 30 next month, and I guess maybe some first phase of the journey is, in fact, coming to a close. If I had to condense three important pieces of wisdom, I think they would be the following:
♐︎ Set your aim high.
This one’s fairly standard but it is, of course, important and true. You have to dream it to make it happen and be willing to put the work in. Everyone should be the best and most ambitious version of themself. I imbibed this lesson much earlier in life than the other two (as a teenager), and it got me through college and out to LA from the East Coast, among other things. If unchecked, however, ambition can also land you in trouble, and so my twenties have been much more about learning the next two things.
♒︎ Go with the flow.
Another, more self-care oriented way of saying this is: be gentle with yourself. You go with the flow by leaning into what feels good and nourishing and not forcing yourself into what is unnatural or draining. Locate the rhythms that keep you healthy but also help you put out your best work.
I used to think you had to suffer to achieve or create things, and the more suffering the better. You do often have to make sacrifices of time and energy to accomplish things, but it should feel right and rewarding at the end of the day. The suffering is not a virtue in its own right but a means to an end.
♡ Do it only for love.
A lot of people are good about “not doing it for the money” when it comes to art and creativity, but I had a much harder time shaking off more ephemeral but still external reasons for writing. Work to overcome your desire to appear clever and be admired. If you’re not tapping into the pure joy of creation, it ain’t it.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I am looking to collaborate with and publish fresh voices and unique perspectives. NEW RITUAL will not be about looking through a slush pile for “the next big thing” or being the next hip small press, or making any significant money. It’s more of a social endeavor, with my collaboration with Omar King as the prototype.
I envision publishing with NEW RITUAL as a collaborative and holistic process of getting your book out there.
I’d encourage anyone with work they are trying to get out to reach out to me, and maybe we can chat or podcast and see where it goes.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattp969/
- Twitter: https://x.com/Mpegz696
- Other: Podcast/Blog:
https://mattp969.substack.comPodcast on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/00EvmaXLjCRM1GgKruEwTF
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