Good work always prevails. There are many things that make a creative person successful but the one truth that is irrevocable is that we are judged by our work. We make things. Our creative output, art, music, dance, poetry, is the result of our lifetime of experiences, our craft and skills, influences of the culture and the marketplace and our own motivations. Our efforts, as such, culminate in the external pieces we create. Without that tangible creative output we are left with the conceptual meanderings of our mind.

Creative output is not something that we do as an aside. It is the core of the creative process and it often comes from the very center of our being. The creative process often leaves us vulnerable. It opens us up to criticism and judgement by those whose opinion we value and those whose opinions are meaningless. In either case, what a creative person needs to focus on is creating work. Only after we’ve made something do we actually have an opportunity to evaluate and critique our own work. Create/evaluate; creative/evaluate; on and on it goes. I often ascribe to the “quantity theory” of creation to counteract my own fears about criticism and judgement. By making, I move forward. I focus on the making and evaluate afterwards. After all, it’s the work that counts.