When Creativity Requires Self-Leadership
I have been thinking about the difference between creativity and living a creative life.
They are closely connected, but through my experience as an artist, and later working on the business side of entertainment, I have come to see them a little differently.
Creativity is the making. It is the song, the story, the photograph, the performance or the idea that begins within us and becomes something we can share. It is personal because what we create usually carries a part of who we are.
The creative life includes everything that allows us to keep creating, especially when creativity becomes part of how we make a living.
That is when we also have to think about time, money, visibility, audience and how the work will reach people. We need to protect the creative process, but we also need to take responsibility for what happens once the work is ready to leave our hands.
When the work feels personal
A producer can create a project and move on to the next one, but the artist often wears the success or lack of success personally.
When the work is received well, it can feel like confirmation that we are on the right path. When it is overlooked, rejected or does not sell, it can feel as though we have been rejected with it.
That is one of the difficult parts of building a creative life. The work may become a product once it enters the world, but it rarely feels completely separate from us.
We put our ideas, experience, energy and time into what we create. Of course we feel connected to what happens next.
The challenge is learning how to give ourselves fully to the work without asking every result to tell us what we are worth.
What the artist does not always see
I have lived on both sides of the creative life.
As an artist and performer, I wanted to protect the dream. Conversations about business could feel as though they interrupted the magic or reduced the work to something commercial.
Later, when I began working on the business side of entertainment, I understood how much had always existed around the artist and the creative product.
The artist and the producer may create the work, but there is usually a team around the artist making sure everything else is covered.
There are people working across marketing, publicity, management, production, sales and distribution. There are contracts, budgets, release dates and plans for how the work will find an audience.
The creative product may be incredible, but it still needs to be released, placed in front of people and given a chance to reach them.
The work does not move through the world on creativity alone.
Independent creatives often have to become both the artist and the structure around the artist. They are expected to make the work, talk about it, market it, distribute it and find a way to make money from it.
It can be a lot to hold when all you really want to do is create.
Creativity needs a container
When you create for a living, you have to find a way to separate the creative process from the business around it.
There needs to be a space where an idea can develop without being immediately judged by its potential reach, sales or relevance.
If every creative decision is made through the eyes of the market, the work can lose the very thing that made it yours.
But there also comes a point when the work needs a structure around it.
It may need a deadline, a budget, an audience, an offer or a plan for how it will be shared. These things do not have to take away from the creativity. They can help the work move from an idea into the world.
Without the creative process, the work can become empty and overly commercial.
Without a structure around it, the work may remain meaningful but unfinished, unseen or unable to support you.
A creative life needs both.
Knowing when to create and when to lead
The shift happens when we stop believing that the artist and the businessperson are in opposition.
There is a time to protect the work from outside noise. There is also a time to advocate for it.
There is a time to follow curiosity without knowing where it will lead. There is also a time to decide what the work is, who it is for and how it will support the life we want.
This is where self-knowledge becomes essential.
You need to understand what kind of work you want to make, what you are willing to commercialise and what you want to keep entirely for yourself. You need to know how much visibility you can sustain, how you work best and what kind of creative career you are actually trying to build.
Not every creative person wants a large audience or a business. There is nothing lesser about creating for pleasure, expression or personal meaning.
But when creativity becomes part of how you intend to make a living, it needs more than passion. It needs decisions, systems and a willingness to place value on what you create.
The work must be allowed to support you
There is a belief within creative culture that creating for love and creating for money cannot coexist.
I no longer believe that.
Wanting your work to support you does not make it less soulful. Thinking about sales does not make you less creative. Building an audience does not mean you have compromised the work.
Commercial thinking becomes a problem when it begins controlling every creative decision. It becomes useful when it gives the work the resources, reach and longevity to continue.
The more people your work reaches, the greater the possibility of connection, opportunity and income. The more sustainable your creative life becomes, the more freedom you have to keep creating.
This is not about turning every idea into content or placing a price on every expression of yourself.
It is about refusing to build a creative life in which everyone receives value from your work except you.
The creative life is the larger work
Creativity asks, “What wants to be made?”
The creative life asks, “What must I build around it so I can continue?”
One requires imagination. The other requires self-leadership.
The creative life is not only the visible work. It is the choices, boundaries, structures and commercial understanding that allow the work to have somewhere to live.
The artist creates.
The creative learns how to build a life in which creating can continue.
Perhaps that is the real distinction. Creativity allows us to express who we are, but the creative life asks us to become someone capable of sustaining it.
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