Is It Good Enough?
This is a question I struggle with at least once a day.
I'm come on here and write something (excuse me for being self-referential for a moment), and before I post it, I question whether or not I really ought to. Before I put a song I've written up online, I wonder whether it's worth the time of the person who might happen to stumble across it and hit the "play" button.
I'm not going to debate whether or not there's a lot of useless sludge on the Internet, because it's an unassailable fact. Sure, there are diamonds in the rough, but when I'm looking for diamonds, I don't rush to the rough. This is why offline media won't be supplanted by the web, and why traditional publishers and record companies will always have a place in the world. (It might be a different, smaller place, but it's still there.)
But still, writing on here once a day might be overkill, particularly if people reading it think that I only hit upon a good idea once a month. Or every two months. If this is true, why not just write once a month and leave the dross unpublished?
Two reasons for me (and they probably apply to you as well):
1. Most creators can't separate their gems from the dross.
2. The gems are born of the dross.
The second one is immensely important, because most people will tell you not to bother until you've got the talent to do nothing but great work. And this mentality is probably the leading reason why the potential for a lot of great work ends up getting squandered.
I'm come on here and write something (excuse me for being self-referential for a moment), and before I post it, I question whether or not I really ought to. Before I put a song I've written up online, I wonder whether it's worth the time of the person who might happen to stumble across it and hit the "play" button.
I'm not going to debate whether or not there's a lot of useless sludge on the Internet, because it's an unassailable fact. Sure, there are diamonds in the rough, but when I'm looking for diamonds, I don't rush to the rough. This is why offline media won't be supplanted by the web, and why traditional publishers and record companies will always have a place in the world. (It might be a different, smaller place, but it's still there.)
But still, writing on here once a day might be overkill, particularly if people reading it think that I only hit upon a good idea once a month. Or every two months. If this is true, why not just write once a month and leave the dross unpublished?
Two reasons for me (and they probably apply to you as well):
1. Most creators can't separate their gems from the dross.
2. The gems are born of the dross.
The second one is immensely important, because most people will tell you not to bother until you've got the talent to do nothing but great work. And this mentality is probably the leading reason why the potential for a lot of great work ends up getting squandered.