That is quite the title, isn't it?
For whatever reason, many of us are driven to create* things. We might take a hunk of rock and laboriously remove parts of it until it resembles a human. We might pluck strings carefully strung over a wooden box to produce tones. We might take a soft, sometimes pigmented material to a surface to impart some thoughts - an image, a scene, or an entire story. Spend great amounts of effort generating a series of images and sounds that we might think are pleasing, and then make that thing available as a video or livestream.
"Why" is... very complicated. I have theories - but I don't want to go into them here. I want to offer some thoughts on the process itself and my own difficulties with it. As with all of my articles, my hope is that:
1) It can help my future self if he is having difficulty, and
2) Someone else might find something useful in here, should they read it.
It's rare that you will find someone who creates things who is wholly satisfied with their work. They will always have some critique of it - some line that isn't quite right, a different way to approach a scene. Actually, in my experience, I think that more pure works tend to come from people like this (but more on that later).
I think... for many people, especially people who haven't built up confidence in creating things similar to what they are trying to create, it goes further than that. "This drawing is trash.". "This paragraph is awful.". "Who would watch this?" It can even go as far as to discard any outside praise - if someone says it's good, it's easy to discard that as them just being polite while secretly hating it.
The mind can be a terrible weapon when turned against itself. Why would you continue to do something you can't do? If you try to draw, and you can't get anything other than this horrible mess on the paper, why waste your time? If every scene you write feels and reads like a disaster, why bother? It's at this point that people give up.
There is an escape that works for me, however.
Firstly - see the emotion in the work before it's done. I strongly believe that if you do this, you will enjoy whatever you are creating. And if you're enjoying the act, the final outcome doesn't matter as much. I can't prove this but I also believe it improves the quality.
How so?
One trick that learned from someone wise is to treat the work as something alive. She was an artist, and she had the habit of commenting on various features of the image she was drawing. If it was an image, she might call the subject cute - a scene, she might talk about how nice it would be to be there.
If you pay attention, you can see this idea play out in a lot of places. The famous painter Bob Ross did this all the time. His trees and mountains aren't just components of the scene. They're also alive - lonely, strong, happy... any number of things one wouldn't normally associate with nature. Even the accidents gain these attributes, usually positive ones.
And although I don't claim to speak for God, the comment on the world being good after it was made in Genesis? One can imagine that this, too, is an example. It's just as important as the actual creation bit.
These are just obvious examples... I don't have any other concrete ones handy. But if you listen to someone talk about their work, from directors to composers, you'll often find them. Chords, camera angles, words can all have emotions associated with them.
It sounds silly but give it a try! You might be surprised.
I think it helps a lot with my next point. And that is - some of us will never create something we are entirely happy with.
"Something is always lost in translation" and "we are our own worst critics" are cliche phrases that apply here. But cliche they might be, they are entirely accurate.
Creation is the process of translating an idea, something that resides entirely with in the creator's mind, into the physical world. That's a hard thing! No one has ever been inside your mind but you**. So although you might organize things in there based on things you've observed from the outside world like "language" and "logic", there is something wholly unique about what goes on in your mind.
And, I think because of this, only the creator CAN be the worst critic. They have the original idea to look at and compare the physical world manifestation to. Every line, letter, note, gesture was a deliberate act that failed, at least a little, to perform the intended function.
Unfortunately, that's just how it is! We're imperfect, so all of this by nature will be imperfect. Those critiques should be used to help the next work, rather than used to degrade the current one.
Lastly? It's good to not worry about the audience too much.
The internet has made this hard. Most (all?) large platforms you can share a creative work will have metrics attached, usually immediately following the content. It can be difficult to separate the numbers from the work itself.
I don't think I can convince you to divorce these things. I have a hard time divorcing them myself - I usually have to go out of my way to hide metrics, like current viewer numbers or page/video views. And it's part of the reason I don't like to use platforms like Reddit or Twitter.
But... I think if even only two people enjoy a work, you and another, it's good enough. The translation had value in the end. And maybe that other person takes years to see the thing. It's not uncommon for an artist to become popular after their death, long after they would be able to appreciate the job that they did. You really just need to focus on what you want to create, rather than you think what others want you to create.
There is something to be said for these things if you're trying to immediately make money on your work. The audience matters there. But at that point you have a product, something that I think is distinct from the creative act. I don't have much to offer on that, because I try not to attach money to things I love.
In conclusion? Try to find the beauty in what you're doing and just do it. If you can find that, it won't be about success or failure - it will be, dare I say it? - fun.
(Thank you for reading. Things have been a bit busy lately, but I hope to publish more word salad soon. Maybe even using some of my own lessons to help things along.)
* As humans, we cannot truly create. We can only organize and transform existing things. Unfortunately, "something from nothing" and "guided organization/transformation" share the same word in English. I'm talking about the latter here.
** Some people have more than one person inside themselves. I guess what I mean here is physical mind - the actual grey matter - and "you" as the meaty, boney robot that other people interact with. I am writing this article before a "you" has truly become digital, so please keep that in mind if you are reading in a future like that :)