All I can say, dear, reader, to open this post is

Oops, I did it again!

Because there I was summing up our six part series on Creative Side Projects, all sparked by Codename Phantom's excellent question.

I was covering what Codename Phantom got right as we talked about in WWN52 : Starting a creative project on the side and how you should fill in your financial foundation before farting around with fancy stuff.

I alluded to WWN53 : Creative Side Projects and the importance of true expertise in your area of audience building.

I summarised the list building detour we took that covered how to build a list in WWN54 : Two approaches to list-building for creative side projects , what to avoid in WWN55 : The Biggest Listbuilding Mistake Writers Make and why not to worry about annoying people in WWN56 : Annoying your Audience with Creative Side Projects.

And I started to wrap it up by talking about what I thought the most important part of actually starting a creative side project was…

…and I done gone and got going and gah…

…wrote a whole extra issue!

So here is part six of our three part series that will definitely conclude next week in part seven WWN58 : Post Title.

(Don’t know how that backlink will work in advance, but I guess I’ll go back and edit it when I publish WWN58 if it doesn’t update.)

So let me jump straight into the meat of today, actually starting a creative side project.

The most important part of which is not to confuse it with any of the stuff we’ve talked about in the series so far.

Starting a creative side project is not about earning spare cash, filling a financial foundation, even building out a backup income stream.

Neither is it about any of the other installments in this series.

It’s not attracting an audience, avoiding the wrong audience, annoying your audience or anything like that that we talked about (linked above) already…

…in fact, if I was writing this series again from scratch, I’d likely put all that stuff at the end. Because that’s what you do after the fact.

What you do first is

Create something!

I mean, it sounds obvious but it seems to slip past most people in the creative space.

You gotta fill your financial foundation in order to clear mental space to create, but then you just gotta go create stuff.

Don’t put the audience-building cart before the creative horse.

First, you make something great. You work on your craft, you develop your skillset, you pursue your curiosities, and you build something amazing.

And then you worry about whether and how to sell it.

Because the truth is that there’s something tainted about a creative project written with the market in mind. It will never be truly creative, because there’s always going to be the temptation to sand off some of the edges in order to appeal to more people.

Sure, you might decide to do that down the line. Nothing wrong with mass-market appeal.

But I truly believe you want to create your first real side project…

…Entirely for yourself…

…Or for someone you love…

…Or for the love of the craft.

Do it for lurv, baby!

That’s why I wrote my book. I wrote it for my daughter, to play with the words, to create something new. I wanted to teach her, and others. I never even thought it would get published when I first wrote it.

I wrote it for my audience of one, and everything else flowed from there.

It’s why I wrote my first hymn, I wanted to play with language and work on words. Then I wrote more and more because I kept seeing needs in our own hymnody as a church.

I was writing for the people I knew, and because I wanted to think things through.

And because I was enjoying the process…

The point is simply that you want to dive deep into your craft, not view this is a quick buck and an easy route to fame and fortune.

The truth is that creative projects are slow-yield projects.

You’re sowing oaks, not watercress.

It takes time to grow, it might not even grow into anything at all. And when you’re not sure you’ll even reach the destination, you darned well better make sure you’re doing it for the sake of the journey itself.

And so I want to sort-of-contradict myself.

Because I’ve kinda hinted that you should park your creative side projects while you fill your financial foundation, but I don’t actually think that at all.

I think that while you’re filling that foundation, building a scalable side income and so on, you should be going ahead on your creative side project anyway.

But do it for fun.

In other words, write that novel after you’re done work. Paint those pictures every Saturday morning. Compose your music on your lunchbreak. Whatever it be.

But don’t go thinking about your future audience, about marketing it, about selling it and turning it into a side income.

Just do it for the sheer bloody joy of it.

If you wait until you have all the pieces in place, until you have all your ducks in a row, all your metaphors managed, you’ll never create a darn thing.

Start writing today.

Trust me, it’ll likely take you a decade to get really good at any creative endeavour (good enough is quicker) and it might take even longer for you to sell something, let alone make a living at it.

And that’s okay when you’re taking the craftsman mindset, creating steadily and working on it for the joy of it.

So if I can make it real clear if it wasn’t already:

When I say fill in your financial foundation first, that’s before you pursue this stuff full-time. I’m definitely not saying you should sit on your hands and ditch your dreams until you’re rich. That’s dumb, defeatist, CAW-CAW crap. There’s much more to life than money.

Just make sure you’re in a solid place before you consider going all in.

So in conclusion, the short answer to Codename Phantom’s original question:

Is:

Just bloody start it.

And I know, Codename Phantom was asking more specifically than that, don’t nobody take that as a dig.

But for most people that’s the answer. Just create! Just make something! Forget about monetising it for now. Forget about finding people to read it. Forget about what anyone thinks.

Just.

Make.

Something.

Do it for the joy of the craft and the joy of the gift. Give it to the people you made it for. Be okay with small for now.

One day that hymn you wrote while working out grow into a library of over sixty.

One day that children’s book you wrote in the car for your daughter might turn into an audience of a hundred-thousand writers and a business teaching them to write better and faster.

So start your project small and without thought of selling, see what happens!

And, may your pipe start slow and burn long, your prose start small and grow big, and your creative side projects become your main thing one day,

James Carran, Craftsman Writer

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