Most creatives are busy bees
We do a job to one of the best of our talents. Then we hand it off to our viewers or whoever commissioned it, and we buzz on to the subsequent factor. However we should always see our previous initiatives as workers, belongings that ought to nonetheless be engaged on our behalf.
Hopefully you continue to personal your work. However even should you didn’t retain the copyright, you possibly can present it, or talk about it.
Put it on the market. Make it pay its approach, should you can. Or at the least enable you entice new commissions.
First, take inventory
Record all of your belongings. Each substantial physique of labor you’ve created. Plus any smaller stuff you possibly can keep in mind, or that was significantly putting. Each workshop, speak, podcast, media look. (Even writing all this down will be constructive, a reminder of simply how a lot you’ve created and achieved.)
It’s all helpful, and it ought to all be on the market working for you in a roundabout way. Revisit your record usually, and attempt to do one thing with each bit of content material you’ve created, each 3–6 months.
How a lot of this do you personal?
If it’s an out-of-print guide, as an example, examine your contract to see if the rights have reverted to you. In that case, it’s yours to revise, replace, or simply republish as is. (Do observe, nonetheless, that the quilt design, and any illustrations or images inside are nearly definitely not yours — not except you created them.)
Even should you don’t personal the copyright of your completed work, there may be notes, analysis, interviews, out-takes you should utilize. Otherwise you would possibly repurpose the fabric in another format: as weblog posts, as an example, in a podcast or on social media.
Maintain the whole lot
In a artistic life, it’s at all times arduous to foretell what is going to turn out to be worthwhile later. A throwaway article I wrote in my early 20s about my teenage obsession with the Bay Metropolis Rollers has been republished extra occasions than I can rely within the a long time since, showing in a number of anthologies and magazines and newspapers throughout the globe.