Take yourself out of every box possible, as soon as possible.
Freedom is a continual process and battle to unbind yourself and remove barriers from your life. Thinking outside the box isn’t enough if your feet are still in the box. Get out of the box and break it down for immediate disposal.
Dig into what’s holding you back and unlearn it. Release it. Repeat until you’re clear.
Don’t be afraid to reverse engineer yourself. We accept a lot as truth before we know who we are. Who we are isn’t always compatible with what we’ve been told about ourselves. Give yourself time, space and opportunity to process and address your discrepancies.
Just do it!
There’s no avoiding it, you have to do the work! Carve out time or allow for spontaneous opportunities to create. Allow yourself to intentionally create without editing. Without critiquing. Without limiting yourself. Your creative space should be a judgement-free zone. Let your art flow from you however it reveals itself.
Schedule time to review and edit your raw work.
Think about what you want to do with your work. What are your goals, preferences, and comfort levels? Do you have a target audience? Where are they? How would you access them? What are your preferred mediums?
Then think about what your work is saying to you. What is it showing? What unexpected message, idea or theme jumps out at you? Give that space to run.
Keep learning.
Technology being what it is, what you know today is nearly obsolete within months, or sooner. Learn new things and new ways of doing all things. Then practice. Learn new software and tools. Upskill. Then create or find practice opportunities for what you’ve learned.
Prepare marketing materials on a rolling basis.
Promoting what you create is it’s own job. There are so many ways to share who you are: business cards, brochures, flyers, portfolio, websites, social media profiles, blogs, podcasts, etc. Creating promotional and informational material can be daunting and exhausting. Do a bit at a time. Start with a wish list. Whittle down to a priority list. Do what you can when you can. If you’re consistent and thorough, you’ll have nearly everything you need when it’s needed most. Keep something with you to hand out as you go about. In my day, it was a a business card and brochure. For you, it may be a link or airdrop.
Learn to stop! Your final will never be finished!
Get comfortable with “good enough,” “good for now,” “this is all I got,” and “it is what it is.” With digital work in particular, you can always tweak and offer updates and edits. If it’s not digital, consider hard copies to be limited editions of a version of your work. The most important thing is to get your work out there!
Know that your many hats require different energy, focus and lead times.
Creating your work is just the beginning. You have to shift gears for editing. Shift again to find (and listen to) editors, reviewers and critics. Shift into high gear to finalize (record, publish, print, show, perform) your work. Then you have to find the energy to market and promote your work. All this before you get to distribution and sales.
I usually burn out by the finalize stage. With my current project, I started marketing and promoting during my editing stage. I didn’t stick to all my timeliness, but I got dates on the calendar in advance of publication, which is a win.
Question yourself!
Have the conversations with yourself first that others will repeatedly engage you in later.
- What are you doing?
- Why are you doing it?
- What is your ultimate goal?
- What can you do today to get there?
- What does incremental progress look like?
- What are your blocks?
- What motivates and inspire you?
If my Suggestions for Creatives are useful or helpful, please share them and apply them! Also, subscribe to my blog at Harvest-Life.org! Happy Creating!
Harvest Life 