create fifty-two

I’m going to be sticking things up on a Monday, starting tomorrow, Dec 3rd.

Been pondering on what I’m doing here, and I’ve realised that doing create52 is a Very Good Thing for me. If I don’t meet the challenge very well (bets anyone?), at least I will have tried, and have gotten some things ‘out’ in the process. Much better to have tried and have done something, rather than not try at all.

As for the things I will be putting out: they will vary, of course, in usefulness, to both me and other people. Some might be useful tools, others might just be something random I made. Caveat emptor – but for the price, who’s complaining?

Create52 is bringing me face to face with my own productive (and creative) process and how that works, and I’m loving that (so far). What is useful about the way I think? What hinders me?

Trying to produce something each week, particularly if it’s a thing that I hope to be useful to others, is going to be best served by a principle of:

usefulness and function over presentation (but never forgetting clarity)

In other words, if I make a small website tool hoping that it is useful to someone, somewhere, it won’t be prettified up to the nines: it will just do something. But I’ll try not to make it be hideously unusable, either!

Which brings me also to this: I am hoping that some of the things I make might be seeds of further development.

I like to think of myself as a creative person.

Except that – dognabbit – a lot of my “creations” are still lingering in the brainbox. Or in the case of the ideas that have managed to be birthed, they’re needing a bit of polish, and perhaps should end up somewhere other than my hard drive.

Hence this site. It’s a challenge to myself:

Once a week, for a year, put something I have made onto this site.

The things I will put up may have already been made, or they may have been started with this site in mind, or anywhere in-between.

The create52 self-imposed torture will start on the 1st Dec. 2007. Let’s see how far it goes…