Maria thank you for articulating this niche and often overlooked point in the creative process so brilliantly.
The unlearning as the essential way forward - especially in our world that demands us to learn more in the academic sense. I love the encouragement to ‘feel’ more and ‘know’ from that instinctual ‘now’ as you put it, that is always ready and available for us to access and enjoy.
Gosh the bit about the beginner vs. expert mind gives words to exactly what I feel all the time about making content (books/videos/WHATEVER) for kids. I know *so* much about development that I feel OVERLY CAUTIOUS about what I create to the point where it becomes so overwhelming that I never even start. I needed this. THANK YOU.
First of all, I love your content. It so often resonates with what I'm going through at the same time in my own journey.
Thank you for being so authentic with us and yourself.
About 13 years ago, I went from a life-long dream of making a living as an author to seemingly overnight, suddenly paying all my bills from my creative writing.
And THAT'S when the creative blocks hit me. Because now there was all this pressure to perform, please others, get good reviews, make sure whatever I was writing was "marketable".
It nearly killed my inner artist completely. It certainly took all (well, most) of the joy out of writing. It became a job, a chore, a grind, a "have to" and "need to", because if I didn't make enough sales from the next new book, I wouldn't be able to pay rent...
What I learned was this:
1. For me to be productive and prolific as a writer (which is required to continue making income from it), my work HAS to be fun and playful.
2. There's easier ways to make a living, if I'm not doing this for joy and self-expression. If writing's just a "job" now, it's actually more joyful and less stress to only write for play, and just get a regular job somewhere that pays well enough, that still allows me the time and energy to continue writing. Not everything needs to be monetized. But it's okay to monetize your creativity, so long as it doesn't kill your joy at the same time.
3. To rediscover my sense of joy, freedom, and play in writing, I literally had to write *just for me* -- no audience, no sales goals, no marketability concerns. Just "I want to write *this* because *I* want to write it", and no other reason or motives. For me, it was helpful to write in a different medium than how I normally earned my income, too. For example, I normally wrote and sold novels. So I tried writing a fun interactive story game with lots of pictures and optional side quests. But it could've been poetry, movies, songs, anything else that inspired me. The key was to do something "different" than my normal business, that still used and expressed my gift in a way that I enjoyed.
4. Be willing to publicly fail, humiliate, and embarrass yourself through your work. Dare to fail greatly, spectacularly! The truth is, people only remember your wins and immediately forget your failures. And you as an artist look much more critically at your own work too... most people just want connection, entertainment, information -- and for them, something, anything, is better than nothing.
5. Done is better than perfect. You can't help or reach others with perfect. You can't sell perfect. Because "perfect" is never finished or released. But "done", even if it's not perfect, WILL reach, connect, inspire, entertain, heal, inform, and give joy to others. Perfectionism (or its close cousin, "high quality professionalism") is the enemy and killer of art and authenticity. You got this far because you ARE good enough, HAVE developed and refined your talents and skills, and ARE worthy of this next step in life. So just create what feels like growth to you, and then share that with the world. Done is better than perfect.
I heard a snippet of a radio interview yesterday without catching the speaker's name. He was an actor who'd had the proverbial overnight success decades ago. His comment was something like: For me, success was traumatizing. I was doing this thing because I loved it, then suddenly my face was everywhere I went, even on the sides of busses. It almost destroyed me.
Our culture frames public success as resolution, as "Happily Ever After. The End." But really, it's probably more like an ongoing plot complication--the murky, risky, tension-filled middle of the story.
Thank you, Maria, for sending this dispatch of truth from the middle of the story.
Thanks, I needed this today. I’m on the academic job market right now, which sucks. Trying to get a job can very quickly fall into “solving for x,” specifically “solving for the hidden desires of the humans you imagine to be receiving your application.” I appreciate the reminder that writing is not for proving mastery, even in a scarce job market.
I love “your inner knowing doesn’t need you to try that hard. It only wants the pulsing current of truth that is always now to flow through you.” Yes! This was so soothing to read 💖
Maria thank you for articulating this niche and often overlooked point in the creative process so brilliantly.
The unlearning as the essential way forward - especially in our world that demands us to learn more in the academic sense. I love the encouragement to ‘feel’ more and ‘know’ from that instinctual ‘now’ as you put it, that is always ready and available for us to access and enjoy.
Love and appreciation,
Emma
Gosh the bit about the beginner vs. expert mind gives words to exactly what I feel all the time about making content (books/videos/WHATEVER) for kids. I know *so* much about development that I feel OVERLY CAUTIOUS about what I create to the point where it becomes so overwhelming that I never even start. I needed this. THANK YOU.
Hi Maria,
First of all, I love your content. It so often resonates with what I'm going through at the same time in my own journey.
Thank you for being so authentic with us and yourself.
About 13 years ago, I went from a life-long dream of making a living as an author to seemingly overnight, suddenly paying all my bills from my creative writing.
And THAT'S when the creative blocks hit me. Because now there was all this pressure to perform, please others, get good reviews, make sure whatever I was writing was "marketable".
It nearly killed my inner artist completely. It certainly took all (well, most) of the joy out of writing. It became a job, a chore, a grind, a "have to" and "need to", because if I didn't make enough sales from the next new book, I wouldn't be able to pay rent...
What I learned was this:
1. For me to be productive and prolific as a writer (which is required to continue making income from it), my work HAS to be fun and playful.
2. There's easier ways to make a living, if I'm not doing this for joy and self-expression. If writing's just a "job" now, it's actually more joyful and less stress to only write for play, and just get a regular job somewhere that pays well enough, that still allows me the time and energy to continue writing. Not everything needs to be monetized. But it's okay to monetize your creativity, so long as it doesn't kill your joy at the same time.
3. To rediscover my sense of joy, freedom, and play in writing, I literally had to write *just for me* -- no audience, no sales goals, no marketability concerns. Just "I want to write *this* because *I* want to write it", and no other reason or motives. For me, it was helpful to write in a different medium than how I normally earned my income, too. For example, I normally wrote and sold novels. So I tried writing a fun interactive story game with lots of pictures and optional side quests. But it could've been poetry, movies, songs, anything else that inspired me. The key was to do something "different" than my normal business, that still used and expressed my gift in a way that I enjoyed.
4. Be willing to publicly fail, humiliate, and embarrass yourself through your work. Dare to fail greatly, spectacularly! The truth is, people only remember your wins and immediately forget your failures. And you as an artist look much more critically at your own work too... most people just want connection, entertainment, information -- and for them, something, anything, is better than nothing.
5. Done is better than perfect. You can't help or reach others with perfect. You can't sell perfect. Because "perfect" is never finished or released. But "done", even if it's not perfect, WILL reach, connect, inspire, entertain, heal, inform, and give joy to others. Perfectionism (or its close cousin, "high quality professionalism") is the enemy and killer of art and authenticity. You got this far because you ARE good enough, HAVE developed and refined your talents and skills, and ARE worthy of this next step in life. So just create what feels like growth to you, and then share that with the world. Done is better than perfect.
I heard a snippet of a radio interview yesterday without catching the speaker's name. He was an actor who'd had the proverbial overnight success decades ago. His comment was something like: For me, success was traumatizing. I was doing this thing because I loved it, then suddenly my face was everywhere I went, even on the sides of busses. It almost destroyed me.
Our culture frames public success as resolution, as "Happily Ever After. The End." But really, it's probably more like an ongoing plot complication--the murky, risky, tension-filled middle of the story.
Thank you, Maria, for sending this dispatch of truth from the middle of the story.
Thanks, I needed this today. I’m on the academic job market right now, which sucks. Trying to get a job can very quickly fall into “solving for x,” specifically “solving for the hidden desires of the humans you imagine to be receiving your application.” I appreciate the reminder that writing is not for proving mastery, even in a scarce job market.
Thank you for being so open! ✨️
I love “your inner knowing doesn’t need you to try that hard. It only wants the pulsing current of truth that is always now to flow through you.” Yes! This was so soothing to read 💖