One of the hardest things that I’ve found about being a creative professional is being able to keep quiet about whatever special project I’m working on until it’s actually finished.
The reasoning behind it is pretty simple – as much as I’d love to share every step of the process along the way, the overarching fear is that by the time I actually get the book/website/misc. blah blah done and ready to be unveiled, the audience will no longer feel excited about it. Or I’ll no longer feel as excited about sharing it, and thus won’t be as enticed to do a better job of marketing it afterwards.
Both blogging and Twitter make this a real pain because it’s really hard not to talk about something when it’s been your primary focus for months upon months, not to mention the idea that I’m always actively looking for new things to share via those services anyways. I know that I personally have slipped a couple of times for one project in particular in the last year, namely because it’s pretty much dominated the entire year and all of the little milestones that I made along the way felt like the kinds of things that one should be sharing!
Then again, I probably don’t make it any easier for myself just with the way that I take on work – right now I have some nine projects that I want to get done before the end of the year, which is a huge crunch but at the same time will put me in a really good place for what I want to focus on next year, but on the downside, in addition to being absolutely swamped and working non-stop, it leaves me wanting to blog about my efforts and progress and frustrations with each one all the more!
It does make me wonder – on a much more relaxed schedule (i.e. one thing at a time…), is there wiggle room to share a limited amount of progress publicly while I’m working on a particular project, or is it truly better to save it all for the big reveal? I can think of a couple of instances where webcomics creators shared out samples of their book covers while they were still working out the details, and at least one drove me to look forward to buying the book, so perhaps the answer to this one isn’t as cut and dry as I’ve previously tried to make it.
There might be something more here to explore next year after all… 😉