In their book Art & Fear, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland use the example of the ceramics teacher to illustrate why it pays to be prolific. Here’s a paraphrased version of the story.
A ceramics teacher divided his class into two groups:
One group would be graded on the quantity of work (number of pots) they produced, while the other group would be graded by the quality of a single pot.
The results were surprising.
The quantity group produced the best-quality pots, learning by doing and getting better in the process. Meanwhile, the quality group spent their time theorizing about the perfect pot but ended up with disappointing results.
History is replete with examples showing how your chances of success—or of creating better work—improve dramatically when you choose to be prolific.
In his masterpiece The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays, the British-American poet W.H. Auden writes:
It is a fallacy to believe that success, even of a high order, indicates a greater degree of talent than failure. In the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because he writes more poems. The minor poet remains cautious; the major poet risks, ventures into the unknown, and frequently fails. His greatness lies not in his ability to avoid failure, but in his ability to risk failure.
This notion of being prolific somehow goes against what we believe is the hallmark of greatness. We tend to think that experts in any field conjure up incredible masterpieces purely through their genius, effortlessly, rather than through rote and hard work.
I used to believe that only average writers had those stereotypical bins full of crumpled drafts and discarded pages, while true geniuses simply needed to touch their pens to papers (or fingers to keyboard) and out poured literary masterpieces and Pulitzer-winning prose.
Turns out, that’s not how it works. And thankfully so—because imagine how disheartening that would be.
Picasso created an estimated 50,000 pieces of art in his lifetime, including paintings, drawings, ceramics, sculptures, and prints.
Beethoven composed 722 works — symphonies, sonatas, quartets, and operas. Only a few (like the Ninth Symphony or Moonlight Sonata) are universally famous.
Edison held 1,093 patents, most for completely worthless inventions.
In his book, Geography of Genius, author Eric Weiner says this:
Geniuses possess a steely determination, a willingness to start over again and again that, while it doesn’t fit our Romantic notion of effortless creation, is crucial nonetheless. What distinguishes the genius from the also-ran is not necessarily how many times she succeeds but how many times she starts over.
For all the creatives out there, if you’re wrestling with self-doubt or feeling disillusioned, here are a few takeaways:
Schedule it
You cannot short-circuit the process—a regular schedule is essential, whether you devote a couple of hours a day or twice a week. Without this constant commitment to the craft, you may fluke into something good occasionally, but you can be guaranteed that you won’t see steady progress. Be prolific, keep churning out material—progress is inevitable.
Maya Angelou forced herself to write every day, even if, in her own words, "was the most terrible thing ever."
Ship it
Godin argues that creators must release their work into the world—even if it’s imperfect—because waiting for perfection kills momentum and impact.
Real artists ship. Seth Godin
The win in shipping your work is two-fold. One, you’re not spending your entire life chasing perfection on a single idea—shipping frees you from the project and lets you move on to the next. Two, many lessons are learned only after you ship something out.
Be open and flexible
An important part of the creative process is resisting the urge to lock yourself into a single design or narrative. At any point, an idea might reveal itself or take an unexpected turn. Staying present and leaving the door open for new ideas is what keeps creative work exciting.
Find ways to deal with rejection
Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times. He threw it in the trash, but his wife ultimately retrieved it. He said,
By the time I was 14, the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it.
The best antidote to rejection is finding joy in the creative process itself, rather than chasing social media validation or waiting for external accolades.
Understand “Necessary Failure”
Every artist feels that he is a kind of impostor. His confidence that he is a good artist is not based on a conviction that he is better than anyone else, but on the conviction that he is no worse. No honest artist can ever feel that he has given his best. Each work seems, to the creator, to fall hopelessly short of what he intended. A few fortunate accidents may console him for the many failures, but he remains conscious of a gulf between his vision and its realization. W.H. Auden
Instead of perfect execution, the artist must live with partial successes, happy accidents, and inevitable disappointment—and keep creating anyway.
The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas – Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize-winning chemist.
Be prolific. Inspiration is for amateurs.