What motivates you to do better? Knowing you can still improve? The pure challenge? Knowing there are people who can generate better stuff than you but that it’s within your reach? Totally internal drive? You don’t need to do better, you just do what you do and see how it turns out?
I’ve covered this in other blog posts, but basically, I’m easily discouraged. If I find that something I can create isn’t very good when compared to everyone else I’m prone to be discouraged. It’s odd because I’m really not competative in the normal sense, so I’m not sure where it comes from.
Anyway, after looking around the interwebnets and seeing a lot of very impressive painted mini’s I was feeling discouraged. But, and this is why it’s bad, I found a huge site with thousands of posted pictures (rated by the site members) and I don’t truly suck. I’m about average. I can cope with being about average and not sucking.
That’s something I can build on.
edit: Oh, and the site has a lot of display quality mini’s for sale (rather than gaming style mini’s which tend to be generic) and for some reason, the ones that are out of stock tend to be the half-naked female characters. You’ll never guess the general demographic of mini painters ….
I’m highly motivated, unfortunately for about four hours bursts, or more likely until I get the next idea or see the next shiny thing. (It’s like being an elastic band drive man. Whiz, whiz, whiz. Stop. Win-up. Whiz, whiz, whiz.)
It’s a real pain most of the time, as I’d love to be able to put that kind of effort in to something 24/7, it’s just that in all these years it’s never happened (and I envy the people who can). It wasn’t happening when I was twelve and I still haven’t found how to cure it after all these years (and I do keep looking, reading, asking and trying). I can’t even drive myself with the anger of being so flighty, nothing seems to matter once I’ve lost interest in something. About the only thing I haven’t tried yet is physical pain, but I’m not sure that’s the right route to go down. 😉
I guess there is a trigger in everyone you just have to find it. I’m sure there’s a company out there that will kidnap your kitten until you’ve written that NaNo story if you pay them enough.