If you are trying to get yourself out there and get noticed, you need to give people something to see. It doesn’t matter if the thing you craft is code, art, words, or something else. People need to see what you are doing if they are going to respond. This is especially true if your main visibility platform is online (and really, at this point, whose isn’t?). The Content Monster is hungry, and we need to feed it.
There aren’t many people who would argue the above, but there are loads of people who won’t feed the monster. They’re paralyzed by the worry that their stuff isn’t good enough, that people won’t accept it. So they hide their work by refusing to promote it, or by putting it out inconsistently, or not putting it out there at all. In the worst case, they’ll even stop creating anything at all.
This is the territory of the insecure and perfectionistic. I know it well. I was – and sometimes still am – one of them.
The thing is, pushing out crap content every now and then isn’t going to ruin you. No creator churns out brilliance all the time. We don’t expect non-stop genius from others, and we can’t expect it from ourselves.
One evening when I was pregnant with my first child, my husband and I were feeling lazy. We had a karate class that night, but it would have taken a pry bar to get us off the couch. The topic of supper kept getting raised, but neither of us could muster up the desire to make any. So instead of going to karate and having a proper supper, we sat around on the couch and ate an entire jumbo bag of Cheetos.
And we were totally fine.
I’ve put some real groaners out there, content-wise. I’ve posted plenty of articles that have been complete busts. All content producers have. Maybe my crap content makes me blush, but it never killed me and it helped keep the creation momentum going.
Sometimes you don’t produce a magnificent four-course meal for the Content Monster. Sometimes the best you can do is to feed it a big jumbo bag of Cheetos.
And that is totally fine. You’ll make up for it later. Get your crap out there, and then create something new and better.
