Regular output is essential for creativity

Regularly showing up at the page (or the easel or the wheel) matters much more than the quality of inspiration you have at the moment. You can’t worry about using it up. Creativity is abundant; inspiration is over-abundant. Using what you’re thinking on refines it, because thinking happens on paper. If you only do it on special occasions, the creative act can’t be a process you can relax into.

Ira Glass on the gap:

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.”

See: Balance originality in life and work

References

Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way . Penguin USA, Inc., 2010.

Focus on the process, not the product.

Tell yourself that you are responsible for the quantity, God is responsible for the quality.

Lui, Herbert. “Forget the Computer — Here’s Why You Should Write and Design by Hand.” Medium, 3 Aug. 2019, https://uxdesign.cc/forget-the-computer-heres-why-you-should-write-and-design-by-hand-19031089138f.

“We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.”