creating

Among the things I've been doing pretty much every day are writing my blog and doing art. When I haven't been writing for a while, it's really hard to get back into it. Same with art. But when I'm doing it every day, it comes naturally. 

There's been an interesting issue that has arisen around the question of being productive. I don't make any money from my blog or from my art, but I want to, so I've taken steps to make that happen. I've been doing that at the same time as I've been getting back into writing my blog and making art regularly, and I've found that, over time, the creative aspect has dominated the productive aspect.

ART

I set up a Redbubble shop so that I can sell products with my art on it. I also use Canva for some designs and use some classic art that is in the public domain, so it's not subject to copyright. At first, I was making art with Redbubble in mind, and I was adjusting the settings on the digital art programs I use to suit Redbubble, and creating art with that specific purpose. But I quickly got really tired of that. It was so uninspiring, and I longed to just be creative. So I stopped adjusting the settings and creating for Redbubble and just created art. I still use some of my art for Redbubble and I also plan to do more artwork with Redbubble in mind, but I also like creating art for its own sake, and that's the more dominant thing at the moment. 

BLOG

I set up a blog/ website that has my own domain name and that I pay to have hosted, because that way I can use it to make money. I'm still trying to figure the whole thing out. After a while, it sort of came back to the question of, what am I going to write? What content am I going to create? And I really didn't know. So, I'm struggling with the technical aspect and learning about that, but then there's the probably more important question of writing and making content. To work on that I decided to start writing for Medium because that will give me the chance to produce this other kind of content that is quite different from my own personal blog. It's more for an audience and seeks to provide some kind of value. So, I'm learning about Medium and its rules and how to create articles in it. I've mastered the technical aspects, read a lot of articles on Medium written by other people, and watched some YouTube videos about how to do well on Medium. I'm ready to write my first article, but the same thing that I wrote above applies. I'm not used to writing this kind of content. I have to learn, which will happen as I do it. But that process is not completely separate from the process of writing for this blog. They're both about writing, and as I develop my writing in this blog, my writing of this other kind of content - for Medium and for my website - will be informed by that development. 

Whether it's writing or art, it's the creative act that is at the heart of it, and it's working on that that gives the art or the content its value.