When you create for yourself, you are relying on internal motivation, and not on external rewards, like money, applause, or comments on your blog, which you have no control over.
If you live for the applause. What if they don’t clap?
Will you stop creating?
Create for an audience of one.
Yourself.
Our creativity speaks loudly and more clearly when the work is separated from the results.
— Shrinivas Rao, An Audience of One
I had read Srinivas Rao’s book, An Audience of One, when it was released in 2018. Now I am reading it again, to remind myself that I can only control my effort not the results.
Ignore
Ignore external rewards
Ignore audience expectations
Do
Do the work for its own sake
Separate the work from the results
“We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.”
― The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle
Do Not
Do not place your happiness and your joy in how people respond to what you create. You are not the painting hanging on the wall. Or the song playing on the radio, or the book on Amazon.
Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it.
While they are deciding, make even more art.
— Andy Warhol
It would be a tragedy if you stopped creating
If the response from critics was not what you expected; If negative comments, or lack of applause, caused you to stop creating, that would be a tragedy.
There are unwritten songs waiting to be sung, paintings waiting to be painted, and art that won’t exist because you stopped creating.
Not everyone will like what you create. Create anyway.
Not everyone likes to eat sardines. I love sardines. I won’t stop eating them because you don’t like them.
The joy is in the creating.
Make art.
Make it every day.
What motivates you to create? An audience of one?
Please let me know. I would love to hear from you.
xo
Pamela
(p.s. I try not to be motivated by the comments or lack of comments.
I want to help you believe in yourself, and your ability to create. Writing these posts, helps me focus on my own creative journey.
I hope they help you with yours.)
