i’ve seen this mindset going around a lot lately and i just want to say: if you are a content creator and your desire to create entirely hinges on receiving validation from others, you need to take a step back and re-evaluate why you are creating content, and what exactly you actually want out of it.

i guarantee you that your favorite writers and artists are not creating for anybody but themselves, and maybe a few of their friends for fun. they are creating things because they enjoy doing so, and if other people get enjoyment out of it, that’s just an added bonus.

personally, everything i write is because i feel like writing it and want it to exist - and i’ve written things that are extremely popular and also written things that aren’t. you can’t control how other people engage with or react to your work, and trying to create for an audience whose tastes vary enormously from person to person is never going to bring you the success you want it to. and, more importantly, it is not going to help you improve.

the people whose work you admire have not always been good writers or artists. they used to suck. sometimes they probably still feel like they suck. but they improved because instead of looking to people they admired and saying “wow, i’ll never be able to do that, i’m so jealous of all that person’s feedback” they thought, “wow, that person is really talented, and i’m going to study what they do and what resonates with me and learn how to do it, too.” it’s internal, and that’s why it sticks - because the motivation is self-reliant.

how we interact with fandom has changed drastically from when i was a kid and learning how to write. i understand why content creation has become synonymous with instant gratification, but i think that’s something we need to actively fight against - the number of notes you get, or reviews you receive, cannot be what dictates your self-worth. you are never - no matter how “good” you are - going to be satisfied that way.

ultimately, if you create because you enjoy it, you improve automatically because you don’t even realize that what you’re doing is practicing. every time you create, you’re refining skills and adding new ones on top of them. if you need proof, look back at some older work you’ve created that you remember being proud of at the time and now see its flaws - you see those flaws because you’ve improved. so keep going, keep creating, and your audience will grow naturally as you do. <3