What it takes to make

Creating isn't about talent or the muse. It's a few things anyone can do. Including you.

I love making things, and I’m sure you do too. But how is it that we’re able to do that? What is actually going on?

The simple answer we hear is that it’s talent or divine inspiration. But when I sit down and really analyze what I’m doing when I make something—an essay, a video, a drawing—it’s not magic. It’s something that can be understood and practiced by anybody.

You don’t need to be special or gifted—just willing to do a few simple things. Here’s what I’ve learned about what it really takes to make things.

Artwork takes work

Becoming an accomplished creator is a journey. I’ve been working on these skills since I was three or four years old. Over time, it gets easier, but it doesn’t get easy. It requires the willingness to push past your resistance and your distractions. And it takes commitment, time, and a bit of sweat. It means creating even when you feel bored, and creating again even if you’ve just made something terrible that shakes your confidence.

For instance, if you want to be able to write essays or books, you have to start by writing. Write on a regular basis. If you can, spend several hours a day, every day, doing it.

Regular practice develops your ability to make connections. It helps you access the richness of your vocabulary as you need it. It helps you recognize poor construction, the importance of rhythm in your language, and it steels you to the process of editing and refining to improve the quality of what you make. The same ideas apply if you want to make visual art, music, or any other sort of creative work.

And because it takes backbone and grit to keep working like this, you have to identify your compensation. What are you going to get out of doing this?

You might get money. You might get recognition. But the real compensation comes from satisfaction—from having an idea, pursuing it, and enjoying the trip. The journey is the reward, and if that isn’t enough for you, then this may not be the life you want.

Feed the beast

When you work hard, you need fuel. That means you have to spend time and energy absorbing information, ideas, and inspiration from other sources. I typically spend several hours a day reading books and articles, looking at other people’s artwork, and seeing how they create videos, newsletters, and other forms of content that interest me. I take notes. I collect information. I absorb and cross-reference. This is a large part of the job—collecting raw material.

It can be input about the forms of art you work in. It can be research into the content that’s relevant to what you’re making. I read everything: history, comedy, essays, stories, and nonfiction. It all goes onto the compost heap from which I harvest ideas.

The more I read, the more facility I have with words. I understand intuitively how sentences are put together, how arguments are made, how references are implemented. There’s no shortcut to this. It is a flaky pastry with many, many layers accumulated over a lifetime.

The good news is it’s a lot of fun. I’m interested in so many things that spending hours a day investigating them is never a chore. It’s a luxury. It’s a pleasure. But you have to put in the time. You don’t just get a garden by planting seeds. You get it by tilling the soil, pruning, feeding, and tending your plants through season after season after season.

Judge right

You have to develop the ability to assess the work that you’re making. You have to spend time understanding why you didn’t accomplish what you set out to accomplish. What specific steps must you take differently next time?

You have to learn from your mistakes.

The trick is knowing when to step back for perspective and when to simply keep going. If you critique too early, you’ll derail the creative flow. If you wait too long, you’ll feel overly invested in what you’ve already made and resistant to making changes, which can prevent you from achieving your best outcome.

You also need the right attitude toward this process. If you use it to beat yourself up, the whole process becomes painful and self-defeating. But if you use it for strength building, it will serve you well.

If you can’t find any errors in what you’re making, then you aren’t growing. You need to seek out other points of view. Get some help. Ask a trusted friend for their feedback and take it objectively. You must be able to take critique and input and see it as the gift that it is—and you must always be able to separate the critique of your work from a critique of yourself. Never take it personally.

Popularity isn’t the point

Society builds elaborate filters around creative success. Capitalism decides what’s marketable, so the industry erects gates to do the editing for it—publishers, galleries, algorithms—all measuring potential by profit. That system filters out what it considers mediocrity, but it also keeps out plenty of honest, risky, or original work that might not sell fast enough to justify its space.

That has nothing to do with whether the work itself is worthwhile. You set the price. You determine the value, not the marketplace. If you get pleasure and interest in making something, then it has worth. If the process feeds you—if the making feels worth the time it takes—that’s the only currency that counts. The marketplace defines success in dollars; you get to define it in meaning. There are a lot of powerful forces obscuring this truth, but you’re allowed to discount them and make your own judgment.

Stop comparing

Even beyond the marketplace, we build smaller markets in our minds—comparing our worth to others.

We must learn from others’ examples, but there’s little point in comparing your progress to theirs. They are where they are, and you are where you are. You have no idea what went into what they’ve made, what mistakes they made along the way, what sacrifices they had to make.

Comparing yourself to others can also become a tempting excuse to quit. If you can say to yourself, “They are so good. They have so much talent. They had so many advantages, and I can’t possibly measure up,” well, that seems like a good excuse to stop moving yourself forward.

That said, you should learn from others’ examples. Study the work of people in your field and in other fields. Learn about their process and journey, too. Read biographies and memoirs. Watch documentaries about artists’ lives and work. You’ll see that every artist struggles through their process. It’s an essential part of doing the work.

Allow for setbacks

There are often days when I make terrible, disappointing drawings, followed by days when I make better ones. It’s a long journey, sometimes an uphill battle, and setbacks are to be expected.

They only matter if they make you stop.

If the struggle makes you give up, maybe you just need to take a break—but don’t make it a complete break. Make it a time of retrenchment and healing. Use it for feeding your inspiration or for resting, and see it as that—not that you’ve left the game—merely that you’re sitting on the sidelines until you jump back into the battle.

Remember, there are no such things as “blocks.” They are merely silences, pauses, breaths when you are like a field in winter, resting up before you push out fresh shoots in the spring. What you call these pauses matters. If you let the thought of being blocked overwhelm you, you will give up—and that’s what we want to avoid.

Accept ugly

Perfectionism insists that every word and line be exactly right, but when you accept that much of what you make will be crap, your burden is lightened, and you’ll go in new and different directions with ease. Mistakes and dead ends are part of the journey. They shouldn’t slow you down but merely make you shrug and push on.

These are not verdicts on your worth as an artist or a person—they’re more compost for the next idea. Remember, you can always come back and fix it later, but first you need that ugly first draft. You need to dirty some paper without fear that you’re wasting time or materials. You’re not. These are the necessary byproducts of the creative process.

Set limits

There are infinite directions your creativity can take you, and that freedom is easily overwhelming, so set guardrails for yourself. That means creating deadlines, defining projects, and setting parameters and goals.

Draw the same object every day for a week, a month, or three. Write for ninety minutes every morning. Fill a sketchbook in a month. Write five thousand words in a week. Let your goals be about quantity, not quality. The more stuff you make, the more good stuff you make. Oh, and the more crap you make, too. So be prepared for that.

But if you make art only when the circumstances are perfect and you really feel like it, you won’t be able to develop a regular practice that will help you grow.

You have to develop the ability to be comfortable with discomfort.

Learn to start

The hardest part of the process can be the beginning: the first line, the first words. Once you have them on paper, everything flows from there. Boundaries help you start; habits help you continue.

You don’t need to start from a place of quality; you just need to get there eventually, even though that may mean traveling through rocky ground. That first step, difficult as it may be, is something you can discipline yourself to take.

Sit down and start writing anything. Start drawing anything. Write about starting. Draw your hand, your desk, your pen. It doesn’t matter if it’s any good. Don’t correct. Don’t judge. Don’t edit. Call it a warm-up. In time, that warm-up action will signal your brain to keep the good stuff on tap.

This is a fundamental truth that all committed creative people discover. Suspend judgment, and move on.

Mix it up

Don’t eat the same thing at every meal. Try different materials, different subjects, different approaches, and push yourself into areas where you have no experience or confidence.

Be willing to try something completely new. It might mean that you put down your pen and learn to play the guitar. It might mean that you write poetry instead of nonfiction or make an animated film rather than drawing with charcoal. Feel free to explore.

When we push ourselves into the unfamiliar, we open up. We see new connections and regain the many benefits of beginner’s mind—the freedom, the willingness to take chances, to risk, and to fail. And then, when we return to our area of skill and experience, we come with a new, more open mindset and willingness to learn and experiment that will serve us well.

Take this with you

The creative life, whether you do it for fun or for pay, is the most wonderful life I can imagine living. Unfortunately, it’s a life that can seem daunting if you don’t know what it truly entails. I hope that what I’ve laid out for you here is helpful and that it emboldens you to join me on this journey, too—a lifetime of joy.

That’s what it takes to make—and to keep making.

Your pal,

Danny

PS. Here’s a little extra: a video in which I read this essay.