Meet Vanya Bagaev

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Vanya Bagaev. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Vanya, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

Being creative for me is rather a natural state, inseparable from my personality. I have to channel it somewhere, be it work, music, or writing. The main impulse, however, in keeping it alive comes from “search”, striving for what perhaps has no name but one could refer to as the Truth, the Absolute, a glimpse of hidden, unseen, indescribable, not in a traditionally religious sense. It’s neither the Truth nor the Absolute but something of the same nature for the creative domain, something that has to be uncovered rather than created. What’s created is a new way of seeing it, usually it’s something that you’ve experienced or felt or ideated. The word “new” here is a key for me and perhaps it’s what keeps my creativity alive — creating new ways of perceiving the world, in particular ways unique and resonating with me, for often it’s hard to relate completely to the ways others present. It has to be unique, odd, strange, idiosyncratic, etc. because I see it differently, as it is for me. As impressionists would say, you don’t see a thing you see the air between you and the thing, and writing for me becomes describing that air. It sounds rather cheesy, perhaps I made it all up just now, because this is how it usually happens—spontaneously.

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’m a writer, despite I have a day job that has no relation to writing. I wouldn’t call it a hobby, it’s more than a hobby, in fact, I’ve never considered it a hobby. I’ve never thought of myself as a writer either, I think the internet memed me into one because it’s apparently fancy, yet in reality it’s not that fancy, in fact, I don’t think it’s fancy at all unless perhaps if you’re a celebrity and harvest money and fame but even that (if I were to theorise) doesn’t come without drawbacks and caveats. However, most of my life I’ve been writing something here and there—it’s just a thing you do, very natural for a human being—be it a DYI book when I was a kid, little scripts for machinimas my brother created, technical tutorials or documentation, or having ideas of stories in my head and gathering inspiration to write them later, in the next life. But now I am, apparently, a writer — I’ve self-published two books, and I especially proud about the recent one, “Deleted Scenes from the Bestselling Utopian Novel” (a book one can call an experimental novel on authoritarianism and propaganda), which is a more serious work and more reflective on my style, voice, and preferences in literature than the first one. I chose self-publishing for many reasons: impatience, independence, capability—if I can do all myself and enjoy it, why should I enbog myself into some “industry”? Also, the samizdat vibe, something what Russian writers have had to do a lot and naturally feel more affinity to Russian literary “tradition” than, let’s say, Western, where writing is viewed as a career, industry, often from a utilitarian angle, a rather irritating one. My view of it is literature is like advanced mathematics, a discipline within itself, an art within itself, hence for me it’s literature for the sake of literature, pure pathological curiosity, self-expression, a form of anti-authoritarian consciousness, which is often important, often tragically so. I’ve learned the process and the tools that allow me to create a book with full freedom. Well I’m still learning it—with the next book I want to improve everything, the writing, the production, the distribution, etc. I love to create the book as I see it, even if it’s not 100% “professional”, at least it’s truly mine, and I reckon that what matters more in the 21st century, in such a saturated artistic space full of industries and grind—to share a piece of yourself in the world with complete honesty and no lucratice or utilitarian thought so someone else out there might feel understood and less lonely when reading it, be it emotionally or intellectually.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Any artist must possess and be possessed by pathological curiosity plus a sufficient level of ignorance in relation to the rules and conventions and traditions and canon. Those things make everyone do the same thing, and I heard a rumour that chewing the same gum is not just unhygienic but also not tasty. Resisting to and ignoring those things is an important skill to cultivate. However, canon not as a standard and not as an ideal but as a foundation, as something that stood the test of time is not to be neglected and must be treated with respect as you would treat a wise teacher—those are achievements of our civilisation, would be foolish to completely abandon them. Having almost schizoid ambition is another important skill, for one has to be onto oneself enough to not think about acceptance and mass appeal (and adherence to any how-to’s) but instead do something for others like oneself. That skill must be accompanied by obliviousness to what makes you “you”, otherwise you’d descend into self-parody, and self-parody is the most pathetic thing one can do. Another great skill—I shoud’ve really made it as a list—is to have is an ability to balance and oscillate between a sense of incompetence, an urge to be better at what you do, a light, non-toxic impostor syndrome, and a sense of being a gifted visionary who cares none about others’ opinion, which is hard.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

I’m not in a schizoid visionary mode enough and often stop myself from doing certain things that are actually very “me”. I would rather be completely unhinged, this would help me, perhaps slower, but to gather around me readers who have genuine connection with my work and not with an imagined persona created to maxx appeal. The fear of alienating my existing audience often stops me from that but I’ve been trying to adopt a mindset that Literature is pure metaphysics anyway, so I shouldn’t seek connection and fulfilment in their rather physical definitions, a futile and self-draining endevour. Yet, it’s difficult to adopt this mode of thinking. Seeing literature as an almost religious practice within itself and doing things for its benefit requires more of schizoid-visionariness.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nova-nevedoma.com
• Other: Substack: https://blog.nova-nevedoma.com