How a craft evolves

Anyone who has a craft they are committed to, or is in the market to find one, should be aware of how a craft evolves. If you have this awareness, then it’s easier to stick to it. To find the patience in yourself as you develop and to find the courage in yourself that you can create something special…eventually. No one is the world’s greatest anything overnight, so that patience and courage is a necessity. To boost that in you, I’ve put together a short summary of this blog’s evolution below.

This is the start of year three of this blog. Something interesting is the average word count is increasing. Average word count looks like this for the past years.

From 2019 to 2020 word count increased by 15.5%. So far in 2021, word count per post has increased by 34% from 2020! From 2019 to 2021, that’s a whopping 55% increase in word count!

I don’t think writing more always equals writing better, and I certainly didn’t set out to say, “I’m going to write longer posts.” It was a natural evolution of thinking deeper about topics and connecting them with previous ideas. This is illustrative of how artists evolve in writing, cooking, painting, sculpting, video game making, or any other craft. The first step is take notice of more and more fine details that can be included to make the subject more interesting or fascinating and to craft those details with ever increasing skill. Eventually, there is a peak formed where more details don’t necessarily add more interest, and eventually the artist finds themselves looking for “the essence”. Not more details, but the correct ones.

This is the fun of commitment. You don’t evolve this way by being a passerby. You do so by committing to a craft and making a portfolio of work. That portfolio allows others to both see what you are capable of, and show yourself your personal evolution. It’s a beautiful thing, and it’s worth anyone’s time to find a craft and create a body of work.

P.S. You can see this kind of evolution of more detailed, then strip down to “essence” in Picasso’s work timeline found at this link: https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/periods.php