If nobody is paying attention anyway, what would make the creative process enjoyable for me?

All writers want to be read. It’s in our blood.

Having our words touch another human being is a joy unlike any other.

But there are no guarantees of that kind of audience resonance. The expectation that our ideas will circulate far and wide will almost certainly be met with disappointment. It’s just the reality of the marketplace.

Let’s take authors, for example, which is the bulk of my own experience in the publishing industry. Millions upon millions of books are published every year. And that number has increased exponentially in the last two decades with the rise of digital publishing technology.

Today, every category, topic, genre and audience is saturated. Anytime an author writes anything, they compete with everything. Because there are other types of better and cheaper and more engaging media that are claiming your audience’s time.

Being read has never been harder.

In fact, if you invest the same amount of effort today to market your books that was invested a few years ago, it would yield a tiny fraction of the exposure and sales previously experienced.

Back in my days as young author, my books used to actually make headlines, go viral and earn a substantial amount of annual income for me, if you can believe it. Hell, the books weren’t even that good.

Today, twenty years into my career as an author, my books are substantially higher quality, and I can’t even give the damn things away. People look at me like I’ve assigned them homework. It’s depressing.

Hawking, the late great theoretical physicist, famously wrote that if you stacked all the new books being published next to each other, at the present rate of production, you would have to move at ninety miles an hour just to keep up with the end of the line.

Not exactly a motivational speak for authors, huh?

The point is, all writers still want to be read. The longing remains in our blood. And it’s nice work if you can get it, but the reality is, we can’t count on it. Not anymore. Being read can no longer be the only reason we do what we do.

There has to be something bigger, something interior, that anchors us along the way.

There’s a critical tenet of the personal creativity manifesto that goes like this:

Nobody is paying attention anyway, so you may as well enjoy the process.

This sentiment cannot be stressed enough. In a saturated marketplace where anytime you make anything, you compete with everything, joy is no longer optional. Whatever creative work you do, you better love it. Because there’s no guarantee that anyone else will even notice it.

This may sound cynical and grim, but it’s quite the opposite. It’s freedom. It’s a permission slip for creative delight.

Now you can make things simply because you love the process, simply because you want to see them in the world.

And who knows? Maybe your work will be read, maybe not. But you’re a winner either way.

Has your art become more of a drudgery than a joy?