【Art Journal – 11/09/2025】
Some personal reflections:
To create, you need money.
I don't mean that art requires a lot of money, but rather that sustaining creative work over time requires a healthy mindset—and for most people, having financial comfort is the most reliable way to keep that mindset stable.
What counts as “financial comfort” depends entirely on one’s lifestyle. For someone who spends less than $10,000 a year, having $100,000 might already be enough to sustain ten years of creation. But for someone who needs $100,000 a year just to feel secure, that person would need a million to feel the same sense of freedom.
Then there are those rare people who, despite having little, feel genuinely fulfilled just by creating. The act of creation itself brings them joy, which becomes their source of mental stability. For them, creation costs nothing—they are the purest form of creators. Sometimes their mindset and work even lead them out of poverty in the end.
Among these three types, the last one is obviously the most admirable. But not everyone can reach that state of mind. The temptations and pressures of modern life are strong, and not having that kind of spiritual endurance or talent is completely normal. What matters is that creation itself doesn’t require prerequisites—it’s something anyone can start. But when it comes to long-term creative goals, each person needs to find the path that fits them best.
For the first type, a bit of effort might be enough to secure a comfortable creative fund and begin working freely.
For the second type, pursuing wealth or a stable income becomes a necessary foundation—or, if they’re fortunate enough to have a supportive family background, they can use that privilege to focus purely on art.
As for the third type, I believe they already possess everything they need for lifelong creation. Unless they give up by choice, nothing can truly stop them from reaching the end of their creative journey—or continuing an endless one.
Once different people secure their own mental stability in different ways, the real challenge becomes consistency. The goal is to protect the creative mindset from being eroded by outside factors. Ironically, chasing fame or money often becomes the biggest threat to long-term perseverance.
So this brings me back to my original statement:
Creation requires money; creation benefits from money; money improves creative sustainability—but it should never be the goal of creation.
What earns money is a product. What results from creation is a work.
You can sell your work as a product, of course—but whether it’s a good product follows business logic, not creative logic. From an economic perspective, creation is the least reliable path to financial success, because art made purely for artistic reasons doesn’t necessarily meet market standards. And when “making money” becomes the purpose of creation, creators risk alienating themselves—losing the very motivation that drives genuine art. Even those “pure” creators can destroy their own gift if they let commercial motives replace their creative ones.
That said, I’m not preaching artistic purity for its own sake. I’m writing this because I believe understanding this distinction helps maintain a healthy creative mindset.
If your goal is to make money through creation, that’s perfectly fine—this post just isn’t written for that purpose. In that case, I’d suggest focusing less on “improving your work” and more on understanding business logic first. Shift your mindset from creating a work of art to producing a valuable content product.
Because a product can bring profit.
A work can bring meaning.
And each has its own path.
(The above content was translated from my original Chinese writing. If there are any translation inaccuracies, please be understanding.)
并不是说搞创作需要很多钱，而是长期坚持搞创作需要一个好心态，对大部分人来说，十分宽裕的经济条件能保障好心态。
而对“宽裕的经济条件”是根据需求决定的。有的人一年可能都花不了1w，那么可能10w对这个人来说就已经够ta坚持10年的创作。
而有的人一年要花100w才觉得自己有了最低限度的生活保障，那么这个人就需要1000w才能获得和前者一样的感受。
当然还有的人，虽然生活拮据，但创作这个行为就能让ta们快乐，创作本身就是他们好心态的来源，那么(在坚持创作这一方面）ta就一分钱都不需要。这种人是创作圣体，可能ta们的这种心态和ta们的作品最终也帮ta们走出了贫困。
上面3种中的最后一种大概是最喜闻乐见的一种形式。但并不是所有人都能做到，毕竟现代生活的物质诱惑太强了，没有这样的精神力和天赋也很正常。但不论是哪一种，想要创作就可以创作，并不需要更多的前提条件。只是如果要追求一个必须要长期坚持才能获得的成果时，不同的人有适合自己的不同路线。
可能第一种人只需稍微努力一下就能获得一笔充分的创作资金，便能尽情去创作了。而第二种人则要把追求大量财富/稳定的高收入当作优先事项，或如果ta们足够幸运家境优渥，可以利用这个优势专心创作。而第三种人……我认为已经获得了完成长期创作的充分条件，除了主动放弃，没有事情能阻止他们走到创作旅途的终点（或持续一场无尽的旅途）。
显而易见的是，即便不同的人都通过适合自己的方式保障了长期创作的心态，难点也同样回归到了“坚持执行”这一点项，此时要尽可能保证创作心态不会被其他因素所影响。而“追逐名利上的成功”，反而在这一阶段会成为长期坚持最大的敌人。
到这就补充了我最开始的观点：创作需要有钱；创作最好有钱；有了钱能提高创作的可持续性，但不要把“有钱”当作创作的目的。
能稳定赚钱的是商品，而创作的结果是作品。（你可以把作品当商品卖，但作品是否是一个好商品主要遵循的是商业逻辑，不是创作逻辑。）对经济成功最没有保障的行为就是创作，因为纯粹以创作为目的的创作往往不一定具备商业成功的标准。所以当把“有钱"作为创作目的时，创作者最容易自我异化，丧失创作的原动力。哪怕是上文提到的的第三种创作者，也可能会因为长期异化自己的创作动机而摧毁自己宝贵的天赋。
当然我并不是倡导大家都去追求创作的纯洁性，写下这些文字是因为我认为它在保障创作心态上有实用。如果你的创作目的就是为了赚钱也没有问题，只是以上内容并不是来帮助你的。我会建议比起专注于提升作品质量，更应该先了解商业规则，将思路转换成“生产一个好的内容类商品”，而不是非要一味追求一个需要大量时间成本才能完成，而收益高度不确定的作品。
theartofmadeline
yousharknotpass
jacobvanloon
pixelskylines
vaporwave
titsay
izzy806
areudirty