Creative lives are just inputs and outputs. You listen, watch, read, experience – that’s the inputs. Then you write, record, shape, create – that’s the outputs.
The problem of course is that there are gazillions – we might as well call it infinite amounts – of inputs: endless blogs to be perused, films to be watched, books to be read and techniques to be admired.
And the outputs? Sometimes they never happen.
Inputs are easy. Outputs are hard.
Inputs can be critiqued without too much pain – “did you see what that guy did? That’s terrible, I’d have done it this way…”.
Outputs are painstakingly difficult and so personal that criticism can feel like death.
Maybe the important thing to take from this is simple but not easy: trying to move our focus away from inputs – the endless consumption – and towards outputs: production, creation, making. This is hard because inputs make it seem like you’re making headway in the world when in fact they’re very often noise, a not-so-subtle way of diverting attention away from the hard bit – the actual making.