“A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”
–Mark Twain

Had a friend over for lunch earlier this week, and we were discussing creative work and motivation. I said for me, there are only three reasons I do something:

1) I enjoy doing it.

2) I am being paid for it.

3) I want to have done it.

Obviously, it’s relatively easy to motivate yourself to do things in the first category. Sometimes there’s a startup inertia to overcome (see: making plans to actually interact with my friends face to face), but generally if you know you like something, it’s not hard to get yourself to do it. When it comes to writing, I’m actually surprisingly good at the second category. If I’m being paid for something, I am fairly motivated to set down and write it. I find this slightly more difficult with larger projects (such as my upcoming Little Book of Mahjong), but still if someone is paying me to write something, I’m pretty good at motivating myself to sit down and do so.

That third category, however, is what I often refer to as a “Mark Twain Classic”. I realized this week that sometimes blogging for me falls into this category, which is why I only end up doing it once a month or so. More (de)pressingly, into this category also falls any ambitious creative project of large scope for which I am not being paid. Small projects often stay fun long enough to also be in the first category. But big projects like books or albums or games*, if the fun is gone and the money shows no signs of appearing, the only remaining motivation is that Mark Twain Classic.**

But things don’t have to be restricted to one category. My humor column happily fulfills all three: I enjoy writing it, I get paid to do so, and I’m happy that the completed columns exist. Heck, I even hope you’re happy they exist, and might enjoy reading about how my family has a tradition of saying the wrong thing despite the Best of Intentions, or how people underestimate the Importance of Inspiration. Come to think of it, probably the best thing we can do is life is try to find outlets which fulfill all three categories at once.

But often that won’t be available, and so we do what I do, which is enjoy the first category as much as possible, plan to work on the second category as available, and tell myself that next month when the paid project is done, I’ll get around to that big personal project.

* Or in my case, a book about games and a game that would include a full album.

** And that’s why it took me a decade to write From God To Verse.