What "secret project" are you working on?

I’ve heard almost every artist I know (and don’t) men­tion at some point that they are work­ing on a very excit­ing project, but they can­not talk about it yet.

A Twit­ter friend, Libby, tweeted on August 6th: “Just ordered the pro­to­type for the (secret thing) I’m work­ing on. OMG my heart is rac­ing! Love to see this thing com­ing to life!”

Another Twit­ter friend, Khris­t­ian, shared last week: “Work­ing on… A super juicy sur­prise to be released on my birth­day!” — I don’t know when that birth­day is, but it seems like it will be a very excit­ing one (:

These are the “secret announce­ments” I could quote right now, but I remem­ber many artists (licens­ing artists, illus­tra­tors, graphic design­ers, writ­ers, blog­gers, men­tors) say that they are work­ing on some­thing secret.

And I am one of them! I don’t say that it’s secret; I usu­ally just share it vaguely, with­out giv­ing any details... “Fash­ion illus­tra­tion for a new project. ♥ This is my favorite thing to do”—Tweeted on Sep­tem­ber 7.

I find it funny; why do we do this? Why do we men­tion it if we can’t talk about it?

Is it because we’re too excited about the project?

I can’t wait for it to be done and launched!! It is so hard not to tell the whole world about it, so I will just talk about it with­out actu­ally talk­ing about it!

Is it because hav­ing a secret sounds excit­ing and dra­matic?

I will intrigue my friends and fol­low­ers with my mys­tery. It sounds so thrilling and impor­tant, it will make them won­der about it. I like that!!

This has def­i­nitely worked with me many times. I have won­dered for a few sec­onds about people’s secret plans.

Is it for marketing/attention pur­poses?

Every­one will know that some­thing “juicy” is about to be announced at my stu­dio; this means I am busy, which is good, and they will keep an eye on my news­feed.

Is it sim­ply because we want to share?

I want to tell my friends what I am work­ing on; I am just not ready to talk about it yet…

Cre­ative peo­ple like to talk about their plans, and they like to hear what other cre­ative peo­ple are up to. If we would really like to share what we are doing but are not ready or don’t want to reveal it yet, say­ing that it’s a secret seems like a fair option.

And why don’t we reveal it before it is completed?

Would this make us feel less excited about it?

Every­one knows what I’m work­ing on now! It has been announced! Time to move to some­thing else…

This reminds me of Derek Sivers’ TED talk Keep your goals to your­self (3:16 min). He says that when we talk about a goal we want to achieve, the encour­age­ments that we get make us feel we are a step closer to achiev­ing it. Once that goal (or project) is acknowl­edged by peo­ple around us, it gives us a feel­ing of sat­is­fac­tion that actu­ally makes us less likely to acom­plish our goal. He’s got stud­ies and proof and all!

Are we afraid to jinx our­selves?

It is going well so far. I will keep my hard work locked in with the good vibes of my stu­dio; I won’t say a word until my prod­uct is fin­ished and safe.

Per­son­ally, I admit that I some­how believe in “jinx­ing.” I like to keep my impor­tant projects unin­ter­rupted by early announce­ments, so the work keeps flow­ing smoothly.

And since I am talk­ing about secrets, let me share that some­thing very glam­orous designed by Poki­dots! should hit the stores some time in the next few months! Big project that’s still in the sam­pling stage. I hope it will work out like it is sup­posed to! ☮

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