Stop hoarding your junk.

The vast majority of things you make are not going to be successful. Maybe they’re lovely. Maybe they’re heartfelt. Maybe they make you smile. Maybe you put a lot of work into them. But not everything you create is precious. Think of your output like sea turtle procreation. Out of 20,000 little turtle babies, only a handful makes it to adulthood. To a sea turtle, that’s a successful percentage.

When in doubt, start over.

You can’t be precious about your work. You can’t cling to a novel that no editor wants. Throw it away. Write another one. You can’t get angry if the world doesn’t declare you a genius for a set of paintings. Throw them away. Paint new ones. You can’t take it personally if no one downloads your music. Throw it away. Write new songs. You only truly fail when you stop making work. Let those tiny turtle babies go, and if all of the stars align for you, a few of them will survive.

You’re always still learning.

A great, great deal of your work was just practice, anyway. The work you’re doing now is just practice for the work you’ll do ten years from now. Kids begin by scribbling. Then they get to stick figures. Then they scrawl out some clumsy landscapes. Kids don’t give up the crayons before they reach kindergarten. They move on. They try again. They try something new. Picture yourself as a kid who is making a pile of things. And know that you always have far further to go than you have already come—no matter where you are in your career.

Make room for the next bigger, better thing.

By abandoning what doesn’t work, you give yourself the time, freedom, and space to make more and better things. Every next thing will be better than what you did before, if you can be honest about what was good and what wasn’t about your previous work. You don’t stay in a relationship, a job, or a place that isn’t working for you. The same is true for your work. If something isn’t working, if it’s not rewarding, if no one cares, move the heck on.

Let the good stuff go, too.

Even if your last piece was a smashing success, you can still do better. You can always do better. Use the revenue from your last success to fund your next project. Throw away what you already did, and move on. If sharks stop swimming, they die. Be a shark. Sharks are powerful, sexy, and intimidatingly fierce. Keep swimming. The faster you can let go of the old and begin the new, the faster you improve. Remember: You cannot hold a toxic grudge against yourself—you must let your work evolve, and forgive yourself for past misadventures.

Go places by dropping your baggage.

Throwing out the old stuff will transform the kind of artist you are. Making new and different work, every piece of it, makes you less bitter, less unknown, less stuck. You will have a larger, more interesting, more complex body of work. You will feel more inspired and less trapped. Clinging to past exercises is the sure path to seething depression. If you’ve spent any time around artists, you’ve seen this. If your only hope of success is that someone, somewhere, somehow, will discover and champion that thing you did three years ago, well, you’re probably miserable and you’re most certainly delusional. Throw it out. Make something new. Let. It. Go.

Critics can help if you know how to hear them.

Critiques can sting, or they can strengthen. Know what kind of feedback to throw out, too. A good critique will give you new routes to ponder, new ideas to play with, and point out mistakes you can correct. If you have spinach in your teeth, floss. A useless critique is just someone ranting at you, and it’s probably less about your work than it is about the critic. And nagging voices aren’t just other people. The voice in your head that belittles or berates you? You’ll shut it up when you prove it wrong, and the only way to prove it wrong is to do more, better, bolder, more wonderful work. That’ll show everybody, actually.

Surrender is not an option.

Your reaction to a piece that simply doesn’t work says more about your viability as an artist than anything else. When you can pivot and create something better, you are the epitome of success. But on the other hand, artists who don’t make art, like writers who don’t write or salespeople who don’t sell—that’s the definition of failure. Making work that isn’t your best and then moving on to something better—that’s progress.

Every chore can be a creative exercise.

And it’s not just the actual work. It’s how you present it. It’s who sees it. It’s where it lives. It’s whom you sell it to. Your creativity cannot be confined to your chosen medium. Your approach to your work must be as clever and inventive as the work itself. Look at your business structure. Look at your positioning. Examine your marketing and your business model. Spend a fraction of your time in the studio, producing. Spend the vast majority of your time on the business of your art. Be as creative as possible in every possible way. Throw away your clients who take more than they pay you. Throw out the artist statement that isn’t strong enough. Throw out your old new-business methods. Throw out your old patterns of sales. Talk to new people whom you admire and like being around. Work on new routes to market. Change up your formats, your identities, your styles.

You can keep bits and pieces of broken things.

While you’re sorting through your work and your approaches to it, know that it’s OK to hesitate before tossing something. You’re creative. You know that not everything is black and white. Some things will have redeeming qualities and horrible features. Again, use your creativity to tweak what you can, to throw out the bathwater and keep the baby (or send the baby to daycare while you paint with the bathwater; do what works best for you). Did that last article resonate on one level and flop on another? Focus on what worked, but reinvent it for the next issue. Does that gallery put on a great event but have mediocre marketing? Jump in there and change it up before your next show.

Just. Keep. Going.

Some people make a lot of things. Play with a ton of ideas. Experiment with different venues and media, different audiences and sales streams. As long as you’re playing, tinkering, making—you’re on the right path.

Let something go. Let a few things go.

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Find some work that is weighing on you—
whether due to your relationship to it, or its relationship
to the world—and just let it go.

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Start working on something that is worth
working on.