After more than a year of busying myself with freelance projects—while hemming and hawing about what my next project for me will be—I’m calling it:

I don’t know what I’ll make next, and I don’t care.

Truth is, I’m burned out from the business side of things, trying to market my books, trying to market myself. My creative battery needs recharging while I reframe what it means to be a creator.

In some ways, I’m back to where I was 13 years ago, back when my ambition to rise above the rank of dabbler reached detrimental heights. But rather than pine for success in the publishing world, I find myself hoping to recapture the joy of creating without worrying about an audience, promotions, and sales.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy sharing my art with others even at a young age. First and foremost, however, my audience was me. I drew, wrote, and roleplayed for me.

I created just for fun.

That’s where I wish to return. I want to work on something without worrying about whether it’s marketable, whether anyone else will like it, whether I will have wasted my time when it’s done. Self-expression should be enough. Fun is a worthy reward on its own.

Which isn’t to say I’ve only been pursuing profit and prestige along the way. In the past year, I homebrewed a couple of D&D one-shots and ran them for my family—while, admittedly, wondering if I ought to try to publish them through One Million Words or pitch them to a bigger company.

In 2021, I produced a webcomic called Curmudgeons & Flagons, releasing 53 issues for free on this website. Sure, there were times when I thought I might bundle all of them together in a print edition or even expand the premise into a bigger project, possibly a retro video game. Yet even if I sometimes saw it as a potential steppingstone, I made the webcomic simply because I wanted to try something new, no matter how other people reacted, no matter if no one reacted.

It was just for fun.

Art Fight

When my daughter mentioned a website where people upload their original characters, and other contributors recreate them in different styles, all for a low-stakes competition, it sounded, well, frivolous. It also sounded fun. I hadn’t made any pixel art since Curmudgeons & Flagons wrapped at the end of 2021.

Why not give it another try?

Just for fun, I reimagined her original character Corvis…

…in the style of pixel art:

She, in return, rendered my blocky barroom retirees as a digital drawing:

She also sketched Kaf’ael’s portrait:

Relatively few pairs of eyes will see these illustrations. No money will exchange hands. I’ll continue to work my day job while my side-hustle remains sidelined. That’s OK. I did it just for fun.

Hopefully, when—or if—I dive into another big project, one that will be published and distributed by One Million Words, my motivation won’t wander too far from those three little words.

Because if it isn’t fun, why bother?