Send it into the world!

One of the issues I had as a younger artist was a high-tension paranoia about my art and ideas would be stolen, aggravated by the very new and suddenly wow-people-really-like-whatever-this-is internet and the many, many, articles about copyright theft by the VERY SUPER DANGEROUS internet superhighwaymen that dwelt therein. Obviously it was a real problem for creatives just stepping onto that new road to our future, and it became a huge problem for absolutely everybody who creates anything at all a few years later. Now? Now it's a right bugger.

There's a danger though, with taking thrle neccessary precautions that come with working creatively and openly with the entire planet. That danger stifled and limited me and I see it happening to others.

The solution I found, and it's only my solution and only one possibility, was when I came across one of my many piles of old sketchbooks devoted to whatever obsession I had devoted myself to for that month. I flicked through concepts and art I didn't want to lose, was actually pretty proud of and wanted to show to my friends and peers and the old worry kicked in; but what if someone steals it?!

Well, bugger it, thought I. Because, when it came down to it, I hadn't used the ideas, I hadn't even remembered I had these books or even that I'd drawn the very things I was so proud of. If I'm not using them then why the hell shouldn't someone, maybe, possibly, see them and twist them (exactly with other peoples work but shush I'm different) and run with it. Maybe it's actually incredibly arrogant to think that the stuff rotting in the attic is someone else's gold; or even original. As a creative I have evolved an eye for what pieces of my work people will like but often, very often, I am suprised by what they love. 

And these unfinished projects and pieces and ideas are unfinished because they weren't ready yet; because I'd hit the limit of where I could take them. It was time to let them go, just like a fledgling getting booted out of the nest. I knew my baby had potential but I'd failed it and hidden it away in the attic like a crippled Victorian relative when I should have opened the window and let it go. So what if the baby joins a cult, or never pays me back for all the breastfeeding, or just fails further and vanishes. That evolution. And Ideas evolve and change whether to success or death, just like everything else.

Anyway. Long story short: your work is doing nothing if it's sitting in a binbag in the attic or a unamed folder on your harddrive. You know if it's good, if it has potential because you're working it and you'll know if it takes. If it doesn't, let it go. Send it out into the world and see what happens. It may well come back to you as something incredible and you might not even recognise it just like our children. 

Send that sketchbook fledgling out into the world and see what happens!* It's your duty.

*not the good one though, jusy the one with a dodgy leg