I love making things. I can't imagine not birthing new art, music etc in to the world. What must that existence be like? We are tortured by the process of acceptance of our art, but imagine not being able to make it. What a hell that would be.In “On Writing,” Stephen King advises his Dear Readers to kill their darlings. He’s stolen this advice, he knows, but that doesn’t diminish its value. I knew that I was in love with each recent creation in part simply because it was new.
Golly, I have almost the exact opposite affliction. I'm almost NEVER in love with what I create immediately. I will always share it with others, but I'll do so almost only as a way to show that I made something, but not to say that I made something of value. It's only later, after I've had time to decipher whether or not the creation, whether it be poetry or song, stays with me. If it does, I may promote it further or work on it more. But the vast majority of things I make die a quick death. They lived, I made them but I don't care to nurture them.
I, like you (I perceive), produce a lot. I feel like constant production is very important. Often, when I fall for one recent creation, it's to the detriment of anything else written around the same time, which may end up possessing more strength, better structure, or even one or two lines that - if I came back and began to play with and finesse the poem - could develop into something great. I often ignore 90% of what I make until weeks or months after the fact. Sometimes I find myself revisiting my writing and going "Hey! This is pretty good! Why didn't I pay it any attention at the time?" So many of my creations do die a quick death, forgotten by the roadside. Some come back to life after time and distance and when I'm sitting surrounded by pages, wracked by the feeling that everything I write is crap, and so sifting through all my recent works to see how I feel about that feeling and is it true? What in the world would I do without writing? I cannot imagine it.