All of us who are trying to be creators, of whatever stripe, need to manage our resources carefully. We come from all sorts of backgrounds, have whatever amount of money available for our pursuits (or not at all) We have different resources of time whatever our concordant responsibilities, but there’s one thing absolutely everyone has, and it’s unreplaceable. Your most important creative asset is yourself. No one else can create the art you can create. No one else has your lived experience, set of obsessions, and attention to certain types of details. You are your own most important creative asset.
Modern tools make it easier than it has ever been to create art and writing and get it out to a large audience. This comes with its own challenges, but the gates are wide open in being able to create and share it with people. But it’s important to distinguish between these tools and your own personal creativity. Writing and Art Apps, calendar software, communications tools, social media sites, even productivity hacks can make it easy (?) to create art and writing, but they are useless without the vision of an individual creator. Being able to say things loudly and clearly doesn’t make a whit of difference if you have nothing to say.
And some sorts of tools can be a trap. There are generative tools (not here to litigate their use) that will produce large amounts of work for you, but if you have not guided ever step of that process, that work is distilled down from available sources and does not contain your originality and creativity. The work is not yours, so be leery of any tool that offers to replace the work you would have done, because that mental work is where real creativity comes from.
What makes your work unique and special is the intentionality with which you create it. Your original vision, which is the animating force behind it. You decide on what themes matter, what influences you lean into, what ideas you cater to, and the things on which you won’t compromise. Intentional choices lead to sustainable, authentic work, and only you can make those choices.
All of this is built on the value of your lived experiences. The things that have happened to you can’t help but bleed into your work, and that is a feature, not a bug. You have a mix of influences, obsessions, biases, and concerns, as well as a set of stylistic quirks that belong uniquely to you. My own work is a distillation of my neurodivergence, my queerness, my history of repression under fundamentalism, my past as a teacher and parent … you have a set of similar things about your life. Don’t hide them, harness them. They make your work yours.
And since you are your most important creative asset, it is important to protect that asset. Take care of yourself physically, with rest, proper nutrition, and exercise. Take care of yourself mentally with boundaries with criticism and other people in your life, avoiding doomscrolling, consistent exposure to new experiences and new ideas, giving yourself time to create your work the way that works for you. And take care of yourself spiritually and emotionally by finding meaning in the act of creation, not just the result, seeking out sources of inspiration and connection, and maintaining your connection with your idea of God or the Universe.
Another way you take care of the asset is by resisting comparison to other people, either creators or anyone else in your orbit. Other people’s metrics—followers, sales, awards won, etc.—don’t measure the value of your unique creative voice. Don’t underestimate yourself. Your path is like no one else’s path, and you determine what success means to you, you don’t have to accept anyone else’s valuation of your worth as a creative or as a person. Create the art that only you can create. It’s the reason you’re here, regardless of what anyone else is doing.
It’s also important to have long game thinking. A lot of people seem to burst out of the gate to immense success. This is almost always an illusion. That overnight success took twenty years of work to create. And there’s no expiration date on your or your work. As long as you are alive, you can create, and success can come at any time. I’m telling all of this to myself as much as I am telling it to all of you. Keep creating, challenging yourself, and trying new things. This is how you remain vital, no matter how old you are or how long you’ve been working.
So, yes, you are your own most important creative asset. Take care of yourself, invest in the things only you can bring to your work, develop your own unique voice, and you will be fulfilling your purpose, no matter the degree of success that eventually comes to you.