Don’t Tell People About Your Creative Projects

Your creativity is something sacred. Steven Pressfield says it’s a gift from the muses. Other people say it’s the voice of God. Wherever it comes from, it’s holy, and it’s fragile; push it too hard and it might break.

I used to talk about my creative projects a lot. They lit me up — I was on fire with excitement. I was always looking to explain them to someone. But when I started talking about them, they sometimes lost energy. Sometimes they’d fall apart altogether. I’d talk and I’d start to lose all interest in creating.

A friend of mine told me that he’d read somewhere that you shouldn’t tell people about your creative projects. He said that if you tell people about your projects you stop wanting to create them — you hold yourself to an external standard. He said that you should bear them like a secret until they begin to come into their full form.

It was some of the best advice I’d ever gotten. I follow it religiously now. I don’t tell people about my creative projects until they have enough wind in their sails to support them, and until I feel ready — never before, ever.

When you try to articulate your creative projects, you dilute the energy. They fall flat on their faces because they’re being born immature, and they can’t hold up to the weight the world places on them. The potential is there for them to fly; they just aren’t ready yet.

You end up killing the gift.

You’re never obligated to talk about your projects until you’re ready.

DESTINY is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you’re about WILL COME TRUE. It’s a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it’s a fragile feeling, and you put it out here, then someone will kill it. It’s best to keep that all inside.” — Bob Dylan, The Bob Dylan Scrapbook: 1956-1966

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