I have had a sentence stuck in my head that has been a source of hope for me, and I hope it will be a source of hope for every novelist, painter, sculptor, dancer, playwright, carver, comedian, woodworker, glassblower and poet alive.
Everything you make is worth more, the more any one thing you make is worth.
Read it. Say it out loud. Twice. Get it stuck in your head too.
Everything you make is worth more, the more any one thing you make is worth. You made one piece of art that nobody wants, nobody cares about. Then you make a second, and suddenly it is a little valuable, a few people want a copy, and one of the mask you, "did you make anything else?" Your first piece is a little more valuable. You make 5, 10, 20 more and suddenly one piece takes off. everyone wants copies. they suddenly go looking for everything you have ever made. Everything else you have made is worth more, because of one valuable thing yo made.
We sort of know it is true. Authors who become famous after working for a lifetime in relative obscurity have their books devoured in full. G.R.R. Martin being only one of many such cases. We seek out the remnants of the lives of people like Edgar Allen Poe, with a museum that has on display such oddities as his socks. People who seek out the lost works of writers from their pen names in pieces that weren’t even that good, because some pieces they made were worth a great deal. Everything else went up in estimated value.
If you quit right before the one piece that would make all the rest of your pieces matter, you stopped before you could become more than you are today. So don’t quit. With every creation you generate tell yourself this one is worth more because you have the experience of previous work. Remind yourself it only ever takes a little traction to make everything else have more worth. Inching toward the top of the pareto distribution is a slow aggregation of effort, and worth. But if you make it, everything else you've made joins you at the top. Even if you don’t it was still a life worth striving for.
Go make things that are worth something.
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