Ten Tips for Creatives in 2024: #1 Focus on the Audience You Have, Not the One You Don’t

If you consider yourself a creative individual, whether for work or for play, you're going to want to hear these ten tips for creative individuals in 2024. Hi, I'm Rachel Havocost. I'm a mental health writer with a passion for destigmatizing mental health through storytelling. In this series, I'm going to share my tips for creative individuals to thrive and manage their mental health in 2024. For a little bit of context, I just want to say that I'm a massive fan of storytelling as a vehicle for connection and healing, and I believe that our creativity can be a form of deep insight, transformation, and change.

And I also know with experience as a creative person that it can often go hand in hand with our mental health. Whether because our emotions or experiences influence our art, or the process of making our art triggers an emotional reaction. Because of this delicate interplay, I am constantly thinking about how we can maintain a healthy relationship with our creative selves and still maintain a balance of mental well being. So I'm really excited to share what I believe will support you in the coming year in your creative endeavors.

Today, I'm going to be sharing tip number one, but make sure that you subscribe to my profile so that you can see the rest of the tips and make sure that you comment and let us know what you're planning on creating in 2024 so that we can support you. Tip number one, focus on the followers you have, not the ones you don't. This was a very important lesson for me to learn, and I'm really grateful that I learned it when I started writing because I think that it has really allowed me to be successful and to maintain a really good relationship with my community.

I want you to think of your followers or your audience, or consumers, or whoever you're creating art for. I want you to imagine that they are individuals that you've invited to a dinner party. Let's say you invite ten people to a dinner party and only nine of them show up. And the entire time you're at dinner, you keep talking about, where's this other person? How come this other person didn't show up? I wish that everyone would have come. How come the other person isn't here? And if you spend the entire time focused on and talking about the person that didn't arrive, how do you think the people that are already there at the table are going to feel?

They're probably not going to feel very well taken care of. And even if the meal is really good, it's possible that they're not really going to want to come back again. Now, let's say that you do the same thing and nine people arrive, and the entire evening you're focused on the people that are there. You express gratitude for them being present. You are present with each one of them and ask them questions and get to know them. Chances are that those nine people are going to want to come back for another dinner party, and they're probably going to want to bring someone with them because they had such a good experience.

So I want you to think about the people that you're bringing into your creative world, whether they're consumers, whether they're viewers, whether they're followers, audience, community. I want you to think of them as people you've invited to a dinner party and focus on the ones that are there and that show up rather than the ones that don't. And in doing so, you will naturally create a place that people want to be. And if that's, if that's what you're hoping to do, the way to do it is focus on who was already there.

I hope this helped. And again, let us know in the comments what you're planning on creating in 2024 so we can support you. And I will see you for tip number two.