Wanting your work to make money kills the joy

This is a real and painful bind, and it eases when you stop letting two different things contaminate each other. The money pressure and the making are two different relationships — the making done for its own sake has one nature, and the earning, subject to markets and buyers, has quite another, so when you let the money anxiety into the act of making it crushes the joy that lives in creating for its own sake; separate them in your mind. Protect the making from the market while you create — when you make, make for the work itself, its truth and quality, setting aside what will sell until a later stage, for the market considerations strangle the work in the moment of making but have their place afterward, and paradoxically the work that earns is usually the work made well. And do not stake your survival on the work that needs freedom — much of the joy-killing pressure comes from needing the art to pay, so if you can, earn your living elsewhere and let the making remain unburdened, which protects its joy rather than failing it. What does the money pressure do to your making?