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Costs of Creation

It feels like the year is almost over with only a quarter of it left. There seems little to show for it, but that is a decided pitfall of producing in the quantity that I did the previous year and a half before that. It's easy to polish and repackage. It’s even easer when it was three years worth of material squeezed out in a new shape in half that time, while everything else ran on as normal around it.

This year has been about production and it is easy to forget the extra time and effort required for that. There's been a lot of retraining that has gone on, and continues. There have been pitfalls and other time sinks. Throughout, the pace remains slow, and contrasted to the more active but less thought requiring work, it feels all the slower. There is even a feeling that the learning period is a waste to be begrudged. Don't do that. The end result isn't always the most important part at this stage. Not everything has to be perfect from the get go. Not everything has to be saleable. Not everything has to be made to be sold in the first place. Sometimes it is important to do for yourself even if it is fully polished.

Don't fall prey to the mercenary. Make and do what you have to make and do to satisfy creativity, and then focus on what you need to do for the market. If the indulgent outweighs the lucrative figure it in as part of the loss or the cost of creativity. Plan on it, work around it as little or as much as necessary. Stifling that artistic urge only stifles the results if the urge needs to be relieved like building pressure, or if it is the steam powering the engine in the first place.

• Tags: creation, inspiration, learning, publishing, time.