Don’t Wait Until Your Work Is Finished to Talk About It
If you wait until your artwork, course or product is completely finished before talking about it, you are asking people to make two decisions at once. First, they have to decide whether they are interested in the thing you have created. Then they have to decide whether they want to buy it.
For many people, that is a lot to ask from one launch post.
Sharing the story while you are still creating gives your audience time to understand the idea, follow its development and decide whether it feels relevant to them.
People can become interested before something is available
We often assume we need a finished product before we have anything worth sharing.
An artist may wait until the final piece is complete. Someone creating a course may stay quiet until every lesson has been recorded. A service provider may avoid mentioning a new offer until the entire process and sales page are ready. By then, the creator has spent weeks or months thinking about it, but the audience is seeing it for the first time.
Talking about the work earlier closes some of that gap. People begin learning about the idea while you are still developing it.
I’ve only finished January
I’m creating a 2027 Far North Queensland Adventures calendar, but so far I have only finished the January artwork. That hasn’t left me with nothing to say.
I have shared stories about the cassowary and rock wallabies. I’ve talked about the colours I’m using, the calendar layout and the questions that appeared while I was drawing. There were also the troublesome trees, the deleted layers and the middle-of-the-night realisation that the scene didn’t need everything I was trying to add.
All of those stories allow people to see more than one finished illustration. They show how the calendar is taking shape and why I am making certain decisions.
Sharing the process is not the same as sharing everything
You don’t need to publish every rough sketch or invite your audience into every Google Doc. Some parts of the creative process are not interesting to anybody except the person doing the work. Other parts may need to remain private until they are more developed.
The aim is not to document every minute. It is to notice the stories that help somebody understand what you are creating.
You might share where the original idea came from, why you chose a particular subject or what changed as the work developed. You could also talk about a problem you are trying to solve or ask your audience for an opinion on a genuine decision.
The decisions behind the work are part of its value
People often enjoy hearing why an artist chose a particular colour, character or composition. Those details give them a way into the work.
Someone may recognise a place you are illustrating or have their own memory connected to it. They might become attached to one of the characters before the finished product exists.
The same applies to a course or service. Your audience can begin to understand the problem you are addressing and why you decided to create a particular solution.
By the time the offer becomes available, they already know what has gone into it.
People need time to see themselves in the story
When people follow the development of something, they have time to imagine how it could fit into their own lives.
Someone watching my calendar develop may picture it hanging in their home. They might know somebody who loves Far North Queensland or remember seeing a cassowary during their own visit.
A person following the creation of a course might recognise that the subject addresses something they have been struggling with. They can decide gradually whether it is right for them instead of facing an unexpected sales message.
The finished product is no longer arriving as a stranger.
You are also creating useful content
One unfinished piece of work can hold many stories. The calendar gives me stories about the animals, the places and the memories behind each month. It also gives me things to discuss about illustration and designing a product people can use.
Those stories can become videos, blog posts, newsletters or social posts. They help people understand the work while giving me far more to share than a finished image and a link to buy it.
Start with what you are already creating
You don’t need to invent a separate content strategy around your unfinished work. Begin with something that genuinely happened while you were making it.
Perhaps you changed your mind about an important detail. Maybe you discovered something during your research or made a decision that improved the whole piece. That moment is already a story.
What are you working on that you could start sharing before it is finished?
If you enjoy following the stories behind my artwork and creative business, you can join Stories from the Dotty Side here:
