Samurai Equine

Last week, when talking about being a better writer, one of my friends said that as long as you love what you're making, it'll turn out fine. The audience you are trying to reach will see that love and respect the product all the more for it.

This is both true and not true. It's hard to explain other than simply saying: You can love a project to death, but that doesn't mean everyone else will love what you are making as well. It's easier to respect the time, care, and dedication put into a project when the end result is actually something amazing that tons of people love. When it's not, it's a lot harder to see the love and care that may have always been there.

There is a craft to good story making, world building, character building, making things fun and engaging, keeping things consistent while building on what's established, etc. When you challenge yourself to learn, you can come out of it knowing how to make better stories. You might slip and fail along the way. However, that's when you need to learn from your mistakes. Find out why a production didn't connect with audiences the way you hoped. If you can't get out of your own head-space to see what connects with audiences and why, then you'll never truly progress as an author/creator. Part of this personal growth is learning to put what you love aside for a moment to listen to the fans, the criticisms, what they gravitated towards, etc. You can still return to what you love, but hopefully you'll learn how to bridge that gap between your audience and your production along the way. Maybe even evolve your fictional creation into what you always wanted it to be. Don't let others dictate how you make your stories (obviously), but don't get so hung up on it that you belittle your entire audience for not automatically enjoying your creations.

Think of it like this... Imagine telling an inside joke. The people who were there will get it. The people who were NOT there will have a harder time getting it, even if you explain it.
Now imagine loving that joke so much that you decide to make entire story/show/series around it. You might love the production, and the people helping you make it might love it too because they were in on the joke. ... But the audience wasn't. And so, the material ends up not connecting with the audience because they just don't get it. Maybe you were in a rush to tell the joke all over again that you forgot to put more emphasis on the journey, the lead up, everything that makes the joke work. Do you see what I mean? You can love a production to death, that doesn't always mean you are always putting the right amount of care and attention into it. That doesn't mean you're a bad story teller or anything, but with time and experience, you can become better. You won't get that kind of experience overnight, especially if you aren't willing to open your mind and learn as much as you can.

So in the end, definitely love what you do and love what you're making. However, learn to love the craft of storytelling and capturing your audience's hearts and minds. Life is full of learning experiences, and you need to love having those experience just as much as you love the things you've created along the way. The pursuit to better one's self is a never ending journey, but a necessary one all the same. Those who stop learning are ready to become complacent, ready to be stuck in their current level of skill with no hope of improving, or they might even be ready to stop creating all together.