In the old days, most creative outputs had gatekeepers. The people who evaluated what you wrote.
Or the labels that checked if your music would work.
Or the galleries who assessed your paintings.
Much of their work was to work for the audience and curate something they thought would sell well and enable them to make money.
In today’s age of online and digital art, no such gatekeepers are necessary. Anyone can publish.
In the early times, successful creatives were prolific. Mainly because publishers had found a tried and tested formula that worked till it stopped working.
Unsuccessful creatives (commercially) weren’t prolific because their work never saw the light of day. Most of them withered away.
But the advantage of having a blog or an Amazon or their equivalents in other creative areas, is that, there are no gatekeepers as such. The software or the system is always available, whether your work sells or not.
So, if you don’t define success as only bestsellers or something that sells to enable you to make a livelihood, then nothing stops you from pressing publish.
Over time, of course, you learn. What is good, what isn’t. Who is your audience and who isn’t.
But the availability of a place to publish and the absence of gatekeepers gives you that opportunity to press publish as and when you think you have created something to take to the world.
It doesn’t need to be perfect (like most articles on this blog). Nor does it have to sell a lot.
But over time, here is your chance as a creative to create something and take it to the world.
As Annie Dillard wrote: “Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Don’t hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The very impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.”
So, write. Over time, it builds up into a body of work. Nothing other than yourself stops you from pressing publish.
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