Moving on From Creative Projects

Close-up photo of two dead flowers lying facedown in the dirt, with some sticks, bark, and a few little green plants around them.

You are allowed to take breaks. You are allowed to pause. You are allowed to go on a hiatus from a creative project. You are allowed to abandon that project entirely. You are allowed to shift gears. You are allowed to leave things unfinished.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you are or the project is a failure. Maybe it was never meant to be finished, or maybe it wasn’t meant to be done so quickly.

Maybe you were meant to learn something from this project. Maybe you can apply these lessons to the next one. Maybe you were meant to develop some skills. Maybe you were simply meant to have this experience.

Sometimes, the only thing you can do for a creative project that isn’t working is just let it go.

Even if you move on, you have not wasted your time. Art is never a waste. Allow yourself to move forward. Leave the guilt behind.

Thinking about all my abandoned manuscripts, the books I started writing before I figured out what kind of writer I wanted to be. I will never finish them, but they are still valuable. They helped me become the writer I am today.

Thinking about my old YouTube channel, which I poured passion, creative energy, and hundreds of hours of my time into. I decided to stop being a YouTuber, but I carry the lessons and skills that gave me into my work today. I wouldn’t take it back. I wouldn’t undo it.

Everything that came before has been a part of my creative path. A creative path is messy, leaving all kinds of debris on its shoulders and in its wake. That’s all right. That’s how it should be.

You Don’t Need to Have a Brand

Photo taken out of a car window that's covered in water droplets of a storefront with an open sign in the window and several framed pieces of art on the walls within. Pink-and-purple filter over image. White text aligned left reads, "You don’t have to have a brand as a creative person. You can just create. It’s fine." Handle @sage_pantony in white in bottom right corner.

You don’t have to have a brand as a creative person. You can just create. It’s fine.

Late-stage capitalism and social media are impacting our relationships to ourselves and our art. We are encouraged to commodify, label, and measure the success of our creativity.

If we don’t have a large audience for our work, we may feel like we’ve failed as artists. If we don’t make money from our art, we may feel like we’ve failed as artists. If we don’t have a defined brand or theme for our work, we may feel like we’ve failed as artists.

We haven’t.

Feel free to experiment, get weird, and try different things. Don’t feel like you have to stick to creating something you don’t like just because it’s a part of “your brand”. It’s probably healthiest to stop thinking of yourself as a brand.

Creativity likes flow, freedom, experimentation, messiness, and room to breathe. Creativity doesn’t like confinement, pressure, rigid expectations, commodification, and, um, capitalism. Don’t kill your creative process with branding. Don’t try to label and define something just as it’s trying to be born.

Let yourself fuck around. Start new projects and abandon them. Spend your time creating what you want rather than what you think the world wants from you. Don’t get stuck making the same thing over and over just because other people like it.

Art is not always straightforward, presentable, and easily consumable. Not everything you create has to be made for consumption. Not everything you create has to resonate with an audience. Art can exist for its own sake. You can make it just because you want to.

If you’ve been feeling pressure to create specific things in certain ways, if you’ve been feeling blocked, try doing something completely different. Step outside of the confines of what you normally make. Experiment. Don’t worry about how it will be received, and know that it doesn’t have to be received at all. Don’t worry about the final product. Allow yourself to get lost in the process and see what happens.

Someone’s Probably Laughing at Your Art

Close-up photo of a flower peeking out between two wooden slats in a fence. Pink filter over image. White text in the centre reads, "Yes, someone's probably laughing at your art." Handle @sage_pantony in white in bottom right corner.

Yes, someone’s probably laughing at your art.

Depending on the size of your audience, there may be multiple people laughing at it. Unless you’re a comedian, this probably doesn’t feel great.

I recently saw another poet talk about how devastated they were to find out their partner and his friends laughed at their poetry. Obviously, that’s cruel and messed up, and it’s going to hurt.

I assume that there are people who laugh at my writing. While I wouldn’t tolerate this from a partner, I expect it from strangers online. I’m sure some people follow me or look at my stuff just to make fun of it. If that’s what you get out of my work, well, I’m glad it makes you feel something at least. Making people laugh isn’t the worst thing.

This is the risk of putting yourself out there, making yourself vulnerable, and showing the world your art. This is the risk of being sincere about what you love.

Some people will laugh at your art. Some people will make fun of you, especially if you’re on the internet.

If you’re a lurker who laughs at my work, I wish you all the best. And if you’re an artist who’s worried about being made fun of, know that this happens to everyone. It doesn’t mean you’re bad at what you do. It doesn’t mean you should stop doing it. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put yourself out there.

As artists, we deal with all kinds of rejection. People mocking your art is a kind of rejection you may have to face. While we can’t change other people’s behaviour, we can choose how we respond. What works for me is to anticipate and accept that some people will laugh at my work and take that in stride.

Create What You Want to Create

Close-up photo of a blooming flower. Grass, sidewalk, and road in the background. Red filter over image. White text in the centre reads, "Let yourself create what you want to create." Handle @sage_pantony in white in bottom right corner.

Let yourself create what you want to create.

Your art can be anything.

It does not have to be serious. It does not have to be “real”.

Creating silly art for the sake of it is a gift you can give to yourself.

Creating silly art for the sake of it is a gift you can give to the world.

You are not meant to take your art so seriously that it drains you of joy.

Your desire to create is a gift you were given to bring more joy into your life.

Embrace the ridiculous. Make silly art. Don’t worry about what “counts”.

Respect your desire to create by allowing yourself to create whatever the hell you want.

For years, I thought I had to be a fiction writer to be a “real” writer. I don’t know why. I suppose I didn’t understand that creative non-fiction is a legitimate art form. I thought that I couldn’t just write about my life, I had to write about something interesting, something people would actually want to read. I didn’t think that the kind of writing that comes naturally to me, creative non-fiction and poetry, “counted” as real writing.

So, I wrote short stories. I didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as writing creative non-fiction and poetry. I also wasn’t particularly good at it, but I persisted. If I was going to be a writer, then I needed to be a real, legitimate writer.

Then one day, I sat down at the computer and typed up an essay about the challenges I was facing trying to access hormone replacement therapy. All of the logistical and emotional details poured out of me. Writing that essay felt effortless, cathartic, and therapeutic, but I told myself that it wasn’t “real” writing and I needed to get back to my fiction the next day.

I ended up submitting that essay to an anthology that wanted to publish it. Years later, I included it in my zine about transitioning. I’m unable to recall most of the fiction I wrote years ago, but the creative non-fiction and poetry have stuck with me. Non-fiction has felt more meaningful, and even though I tried to push it away, I couldn’t stop writing it.

I have since learned that this thing I do where I write about my life is called creative non-fiction, many writers do it, and it’s a perfectly legitimate art form. It is creative, expansive, cathartic, therapeutic, vulnerable, brave, painful, and also ART.

These days, I write what I want. When I noticed I was writing more about kink, I went, okay, that’s a scary subject to tackle publicly, but I’m going to make a zine about it. When I found myself writing more poetry than prose, I embraced that. When I started to enjoy adding text to my photographs, I indulged in that too. I create because I am driven to. I believe it makes more sense to create what I want rather than what I think I should. Both I and my art are better off for it.

Life is Absurd

Photo of the body of a stuffed long-neck dinosaur toy sitting on a ledge in front of a window. A fence with some vines on it can be seen behind the dinosaur outside of the window. Green filter over image. White text in the centre reads, "Life isn't that serious." Handle @sage_pantony in white in bottom right corner.

Life isn’t that serious.

Sure, it has its moments, but mainly, life is absurd.

I am at my healthiest when I can recognize the absurdity.

I am at my healthiest when I can laugh at my life.

It’s when I get too serious that I get stuck.

If there’s one quality I could never live without, it’s my sense of humour. I wouldn’t be here without this coping mechanism, and I wouldn’t be me.

Life is absurd. Think about it.

We’re living through late-stage capitalism and making memes.

We think of ourselves as these incredibly productive beings, yet we sleep for a third of our lives.

They sell chocolate pizzas at the store. I’m an adult who hasn’t swept their apartment for over three months. I broke off the end of my favourite knife on a frozen burrito.

None of us know what the hell we’re doing. We’re just stumbling around trying to put on a good show.

Life is a lot of things, including absurd. Embracing that absurdity has gotten me through its most difficult chapters, its darkest moments.

Also, I like absurdity. It keeps things interesting, keeps me on my toes, laughing, expecting the unexpected.

Life can be incredibly serious, yes, but even at its most serious, it’s not that serious. Life is absurd.