
The emotional journey of creating anything great - gballan
https://twitter.com/Bill_Gross/status/1000211381109469184?s=20
======
manibatra
My strategy for dealing with the dip/valley of despair are a few simple rules
that I have formalised for myself and are helping me a lot.

\- Howsoever great the project is in the beginning, it will go through a phase
where it’s going to suck for whatever reason. I know it. It doesn’t surprise
me. I take it in my stride.

\- I have absolute faith during that phase that it will get better on the
other side. Absolute. And nothing is going to convince me otherwise.

\- It is not a sprint.

\- Mantain healthy relationships, mind (meditation) and body (exercise). Do
not let them fall below a certain level because gaining these things back and
being productive at the sometime is a struggle. From my own personal
experience.

------
DanielBMarkham
Publicly creating anything is an interesting experience. I've spent my life
coding, but in my spare time I've created things: magazine articles, apps,
presentations, books, and so forth.

When you first start, you're usually in love with yourself. Anybody watch "A
Christmas Story"? Most new creators are like little Ralph, amazed at how
awesome their work is.

At some point, you move into being a professional. Then you realize that
everything you create sucks. It just sucks in various ways and to various
degrees. The difference between an artist and an amateur is that the artist is
never satisfied with their work.

That's the internal battle. Externally, over and over again, you release some
new "incredible" piece of work, tell everybody about it?

Crickets.

Nobody cares. You, if you're an average person, could find a cure to cancer
today. Nobody would care. There's a whole universe set up in each genre around
who's important, who to listen to, and so forth. The quality of your work and
the value of your work have nothing to do with anything. All those years that
Google told us that if you wanted to be heard, just publish good content. It
was bullshit. Humans don't work that way. We are a social species and we
consume based on social cues.

I finished a book last month, Info-Ops. [https://leanpub.com/info-
ops](https://leanpub.com/info-ops) Took me six years to get through it. At the
end, am I happy?

Not so much. Angry is probably a better word for it. Creating something does
not immediately cause good feedback to happen. Just the opposite. Now the
_real_ work begins: getting people to listen. And that's usually a long,
difficult, demoralizing slog. You suck it up and move on. The only people I
know who are extremely pleased with creating a major work or either the
already-successful -- or the people who don't know any better.

I've heard successful startup founders describe it as going out there with
your message and saying it over and over again until you're completely sick of
it. Then saying it some more. When we see these successful companies, what we
don't realize, as the tweet shows, they all spent time talking to the wall.

My big mistake over the years was not romanticizing the creation part. I moved
to professional status fairly quickly. It was romanticizing the curve of
despair part, oddly enough. I had to learn that there's no honor or special
hero status for moving through this stage. Lots of failed efforts go through
it as well. (In fact, the stats say it's more likely that you're on a failed
effort. You still have to go through here.) You have to mature and see it as
just more work, like the rest of it. The reason I use the word "anger" to
describe the feeling is that it's much like taking a shovel and digging a
small hole -- then realizing that the job in front of you is to dig an entire
trench. There's usually some cursing involved.

You can say that's it's all fun and challenging, or you can say it's all pain
and misery. But it's just the work. At the end of the day, it's just the work.

Some people say successful startups are all luck. Some say they're all hard
work. The truth is that they're all on this same journey, whether it all ends
up well or not. If you stick with it, you might succeed. If you give up, you
never will. (Insert Zen/Existentialism discussion here)

~~~
Pimpus
> The quality of your work and the value of your work have nothing to do with
> anything. All those years that Google told us that if you wanted to be
> heard, just publish good content. It was bullshit. Humans don't work that
> way. We are a social species and we consume based on social cues.

People believe what they want to believe, and I think you've already made up
your mind. From my view, however, you are just going to limit your success
with such beliefs, and worse, the cynicism will drain your enthusiasm and
energy.

If you want to be heard, the answer is simple: _make something that 's
interesting to people_. I know a ton of very talented chiptune artists who are
struggling. Why? Well, would _you_ buy a chiptune album? People spend too much
time in their own private universes and forget what other people are looking
for. I'm not saying you shouldn't make chiptune or mathcore or whatever, but
you have to be realistic about it, especially if you want to make money.

And look, I'll be honest -- not trying to be mean here, really -- but I'm not
at all surprised your book isn't generating interest. My first reaction to
"Info-Ops" is that it's super dry and technical, not to mention I have no idea
what it means. So right off the bat I have a bad gut reaction. Did you not get
any second opinions about this title? And $40 for an e-book... well, I
admittedly don't know anything about pricing books, but if an e-book is too
expensive then people will just pirate it, no?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thank you for your comment. I consider it negative, but that's a good thing! I
love negative feedback.

I don't want to get into a slug-fest over the work. After all, you don't even
know what it is. You just know what you saw. So really all we could talk about
is first impressions.

I would like, however to take issue with your thesis. _If you want to be
heard, the answer is simple: make something that 's interesting to people._

It is _necessary_ to make something that's interesting to people, but it is
not _sufficient_ to do so. That was my entire point. The interesting and
valuable part is table stakes.

Price? I'd give it away for free. I'm not trying to sell the most books. I'm
trying to help the most people. Price is an indicator of commitment. If I get
a lot of people paying the money and blowing it off? I might raise the price.
If people pirate it? I want it to make a difference.

There are a lot of people who want to sell two-dollar self-help books and
such. Wonderful market. That's just not my game.

Finally, you have to consider that a landing page, if you're honest, isn't
just to sell books. One of the most important things you can do is turn away
people that might be wasting their money. I know that goes against all that is
good and holy on HN, but really. I don't want people reading it that are
wasting their time. That's awful.

So it's all good. Thank you for the first impressions. I haven't really
already decided about much of anything aside from there's a lot of work left
to do -- and that considering as much work as I've been through so far, that
pisses me off somewhat. So what? I've been angry before. It sounds like a lot
of work has to do with the landing page. Cool. Time to get started.

ADD: You know, there is a huge hunk of money spent every year on books that
have great first impressions -- and don't make a positive difference in
people's lives. Billions. So coming at this from "But your first impression
sucks!" is kinda backwards, at least the way I see it. You want value, then
creativity and interest, then honesty .... somewhere down the line you work on
turning people on with a web page.

~~~
Pimpus
> I don't want to get into a slug-fest over the work.

That wasn't my intention at all. I just thought I'd share my first impression
because, as a newcomer to your work, I probably see it much differently than
you do.

I read through your whole post, and -- sorry, this is going to be another
first impression, made over the internet, so take it with a grain of salt --
you seem to be very emotionally involved with your work. I would be, too, if I
spent that much time on something. I think you would benefit from seeking
advice from an unbiased third party. I don't know who that would be -- a
publisher? an agent? I know nothing about the book world.

> Finally, you have to consider that a landing page, if you're honest, isn't
> just to sell books. One of the most important things you can do is turn away
> people that might be wasting their money. I know that goes against all that
> is good and holy on HN, but really. I don't want people reading it that are
> wasting their time. That's awful.

I think a good, professional publisher (or whoever) would berate you for
saying this. How can you possibly know who will benefit from your work and who
won't ahead of time? I also don't like deceptive advertising but I think you
can make your work attractive while also being honest and true to yourself.

For the record, I share a lot of your frustrations with regards to generating
publicity. I _really_ resonated with this:

> Creating something does not immediately cause good feedback to happen. Just
> the opposite. Now the _real_ work begins: getting people to listen. And
> that's usually a long, difficult, demoralizing slog. You suck it up and move
> on.

However, I don't think that viewing this as long, difficult, or demoralizing
is productive or even rational reaction to have, which is why I'm working on
trying to see this differently, myself.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I believe you're reading this as much more negative and confrontative than it
was meant to be. The post was about how there was an emotional journey to
creating great things. My comment simply relayed a personal experience that
agreed with the tweet. That's it. It's an emotional journey. Creating things
of value can be deeply emotional.

More to the point, recognize the sucky parts and continue on anyway.

"I think you would benefit from seeking advice from an unbiased third party."
\-- sure thing. I've ran more than 50 beta readers through the book. And I
plan on seeking editing services. A trusted third-party is always a good
thing. Why wouldn't it be?

"How can you possibly know who will benefit from your work and who won't ahead
of time?" Well you can't, which is why you use beta readers. I know my work. I
know my work helps people. And I know the people I help would also be helped
from this book. That's just a starting place, mind you, but it's a pretty
strong one. Then, and only then, do you start looking at tone, product-market
fit and the rest of it.

I decided not to go the professional publishing route, even though I probably
could have made it work. Why? Because I am purposefully doing this upside-
down. That doesn't mean a professional publisher or editor wouldn't be great.
Self-publishing is a ton of work. But so is ditch-digging. So is anything of
this nature.

Yes, I can certainly make my work attractive while also being honest. I have
work to do. Yay!

The purpose of the tweet was to tell people that there's an emotional trough
you have to go through. That was also my purpose. It's normal -- and whether
you need to get angry, happy, sad, or whatnot to make your way through it,
it's quite an emotional ride! Don't lie to yourself about what's ahead and
prepare yourself.

~~~
Pimpus
> I believe you're reading this as much more negative and confrontative than
> it was meant to be.

Absolutely not. I found your posts really interesting, it's a perspective I
hadn't considered and you articulate it well. And no confrontation was
intended from my end.

> Don't lie to yourself about what's ahead and prepare yourself.

"What's ahead" is unpredictable and unknown. You should certainly be prepared,
but just avoid self-fulfilling prophecies like saying "it's difficult" etc.
That can also put some people off of ever creating anything in the first
place.

I have to go now, but thanks for the comments!

------
keyle
I found that there is no valley of despair if I'm working on something that
has absolutely no chance of turning a profit. Open source or pure research or
hackery with a non-commercial horizon never stresses me out. If on the other
hand I hope that this will make me money, despaaaaaair.

Yet, the non-financially viable journeys don't necessarily mean 'not great'.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Money does seem to have a way of draining all the pleasure from an activity.
I'm getting close to retirement and I am hoping that doing some non-commercial
work will bring it back.

------
tw1010
It's called traversing a valley of the fitness landscape. The comfortable
strategy is to just stay where you are, with everyone else mediocre, at the
current local population maxima. The uncomfortable strategy is to dare execute
on your visions; which often means passing through states of lower energy
before reaching the great. You think you see a hill higher than the one you
and everyone else is standing on right now, but you're not sure because it's
far away. What posts like these rarely mention, however, is just how many ants
die far out in the low-energy desert plains; we only hear about the successes.

~~~
alexpetralia
This very much reminds me of what Kevin Kelly wrote in 1998:
[http://kk.org/newrules/blog/strategies/#4386-footer](http://kk.org/newrules/blog/strategies/#4386-footer)

His advice? "Don't go alone."

~~~
tw1010
Or very tactfully and with great timing follow the tailwind of other
innovators, e.g. Apple.

------
SyneRyder
Seth Godin wrote a book on this a decade ago, called The Dip. It's short, but
a good book (and the Audible audiobook is quite good too).

[https://smile.amazon.com/Dip-Little-Book-Teaches-
Stick/dp/15...](https://smile.amazon.com/Dip-Little-Book-Teaches-
Stick/dp/1591841666/)

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip/](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip/)

~~~
alexobenauer
Within the last 10 hours that you posted this, I went out to buy the book and
read it (it's pretty brief).

It's a really great read particularly if you've been in a dip and / or a cul
de sac (as Godin refers to projects that dip but won't turn back up). Being
able to identify the dip and its characteristics allows one to prepare for it,
and to have a strategy for not just enduring it, but for making it as much of
an advantage as is possible.

Thanks for posting this, SyneRyder.

------
QuadrupleA
Of course the first half of this graph is the same as the journey to creating
something that fails :). Persistence is required either way. But it's
important to consider cutting your losses at some point too.

~~~
maxxxxx
That's why you shouldn't put too much value into advice from successful people
that came back from the brink of failure. For every one that turned almost
failure into success there are probably dozens who did the same thing and just
failed.

~~~
tlb
Those are the best available people to ask, though. You wouldn't want to ask
people who entirely failed, or never tried. People who claim they never
experienced near-failures on their way to success are either lying, or
attempted something unambitious, or were so lucky that their experience isn't
representative.

------
8bitsrule
One hard part is putting aside the stuff you wanted to get in there, but then
you remembered you only have one lifetime.

Worse yet, you keep finding more and more great details, which you wouldn't
even have noticed when you started, but now have the experience to appreciate.
Then spend more time wondering whether anyone else would care about them.

Either "Great artists SHIP!" eventually overrides, or else ... the quicksand
wins.

(Read earlier today that Tolsoy originally published 'War and Peace' serially,
then heavily rewrote -that whole thing-. Ay yay.)

------
maxxxxx
I always tell people that for any worthwhile project there will be phase of
deep regret "why did I ever start this?". It's a little sad that a lot of
management and project planning methodologies don't allow for this and want to
convert work into simple linear steps.

~~~
mirceal
Like despair in short sprints? Agile despair?

In all seriousness, in my experience, all things worthwhile are not started as
an “official” project. They start either as a skunkworks project or something
someone does on the side.

