It’s a weird time to be a creator. Imagine how hard it was just 20 years ago to simply acquire the tools to write and record a new song, or the sheer amount of money that would go into filming a 10-minute video. This doesn’t even factor in the massive obstacles in distributing your art to anyone beyond your closest friends and colleagues.

‍Today, it’s easier to create and share than ever before, leading to a new set of challenges—we’re competing for time and attention against individual creators and big technology platforms. There’s so much content out there that even your greatest masterpiece, your ars poetica, your defining work, could be seen as just another video or song or poem among an overwhelming sea of others, if it’s seen at all. 

‍This realization can make it feel pointless to create. Art is often a way to connect with others. It’s a way to create something from our interiority, hoping others see themselves in it, whether through a laugh or a smile or a tear or even just a like. There were points in my creative career when I thought that this was the primary reason to create and strive to improve my craft, and that all of my work was to reach an audience that could connect with my work. But given the intense competition for attention, I’ve found that it’s not enough to create solely for the purpose of finding that level of connection or social validation. It’s impossible to do so when our art could go unseen entirely.

‍As creators, we must search for other purposes: reasons to create outside of the social response our art might generate. 

‍Over the past five years, I’ve written over 200 newsletters. Although a few received responses, most of them felt like throwing letters to the wind—never to be referred to again. And yet, week after week, I sat down at my desk to write something new that had a high chance of yielding nothing in return. Why?

‍In a podcast, author and artist Austin Kleon talks about how everyone draws as kids but most eventually give it up when they decide that they’re bad at art. He counters this idea with a question: do you go for a walk for the result of the walk, or for the experience of walking? As kids, we draw for the sake of drawing, not necessarily to create a work of art. It’s doodling, something to fill the time, a way to find shape in the world or make ideas from imagination visible. It’s about the experience of drawing, not about creating something beautiful or amazing. And the same is true of any art form.

‍I wasn’t always fully aware of it, but I wrote a newsletter every week because I loved to write. I loved the perfect days when words seemed to flow out of my head as if the muses were whispering directly into my ears. I loved the frustration of searching far and wide for a topic, chasing down an idea and writing hundreds of words about it just to throw it all away and start again when it didn’t feel right. I loved how difficult it was. Doing difficult things has always been more satisfying than doing the easy ones.

‍I wrote a newsletter that went out to people because I needed accountability. The weekly nature of the newsletter kept me going. What people thought of it and how people responded to it was an added bonus. After over five years of writing, only within the last six months did any of it lead anywhere. And even when it did, I wasn’t awash with ecstasy—overwhelmed by joy that all my work had achieved a concrete result. Any newfound opportunity didn’t recolor the experience or reasoning behind all my previous work. The purpose of my writing has always been to write. I’m a writer because I participate in the act of writing, not because I have written.

‍American sculptor John T. Unger said, “Art is the fossil record of the artist.” What is left is simply the result of the experience—the act of creating in the first place. From an interview with Cy Twombly, 

‍“Each line he made, he said, was ‘the actual experience’ of making the line, adding: ‘It does not illustrate. It is the sensation of its own realization.’ Years later he described this more plainly. ‘It’s more like I’m having an experience than making a picture.’”

‍Aracelis Girmay said it in her poem “Ars Poetica”:

May the poems be
the little snail’s trail. 

‍Everywhere I go,
every inch: quiet record

‍of the foot’s silver prayer:
I lived once.
Thank you.
It was here.

‍My reasons to create needn’t be the same as yours. I know nothing about what it’s like to create music or videos or paintings, but I do know this: we all must make art for a reason, and often, the act of making the art is reason enough.