(This is a bit about how I'm annoyed by stock creative advice. However, it's not a joke.)
For your very first project, start as big as you can. Work on your dream project right away. Learn how to tune and present things by bashing your head against something bigger than yourself. Internalize the feeling of defeat, the feeling of spotting the white whale at last. You'll need them if you want to make anything meaningful. Only after enlightened exhaustion can you begin your work on Snake.
Give into fear and shame. Your ancestors did not evolve fear and shame over millions of years for you to ignore them when doing something expressly meaningful to you. Ask yourself why you feel these things-- Do you fear failure? What are you ashamed of? Can you learn something about your values by asking these questions? Listen to fear and shame, defeat them if it's necessary for your soul, but never ignore them.
Think inside the box. There are thousands of years of tradition on how to write good sentences; even if your artistic medium is too young to vote, the question of how to do good writing did not originate with it. Just figure out the problem you need to solve ("My page is blank", &cet) and write the most obvious of the good, voiceful sentences that could solve it. Problem-solving creativity-- Do something weird, outside-the-box, &cet only when you (a) can clearly articulate the problem you need your sentence to solve, and (b) have tried the most obvious solution and it's not enough.
Seriously, don't worry about whether your art is something only you could make. Anyone can make art only they can make by publishing their social security number on itch. Worry about making obvious, good, voiceful sentences. You ever read a mathematical proof? Hundreds of the most obvious possible sentences strung together, literally just "if this is true, then this is true", and they still read like the author is pulling back the curtain of the night sky to reveal truth. By just saying true things in an order.
Don't worry about the inherent qualities of your medium. Sure, people have different ideas about what constitutes a good sentence in blogwriting vs. poetry vs. TTRPG design vs. Rust programming. But your voice is more important than any of these things. Just write a good sentence at a time (I keep saying sentences, but a single good whatever the atom of your creative project is). Then, figure out what problem your text has, and write a good sentence to solve it. Don't worry about whether you're in the "right" medium, and by god don't worry about whether you're saying something you can only say in that medium.
Think obsessively about your audience. Even books are interactive. Even self-indulgent smut for your eyes only starts a conversation between the you-author and the you-experiencer. Conversation. Whatever moral values you have regarding spoken or written conversations apply here, too. Even a tiresome monologue needs a listener.
Distrust your intuition. When you write a sentence that just seems right, and you don't know why, don't say "Well, my intuition knows best." That's how you get thoughtless caricature antagonists, the replication of kyriarchy laundered in as archetype or intuition. Perhaps say "I'm going to pause a moment and figure out why this sentence is effective", or perhaps "I'm going to continue writing, as a way of engaging with this sentence to figure out how it works." There is no Outside.
Don't join an artistic community. Find world-weary weirdos. Make loved ones, those who you can make art with, about, for. Learn to pick fights about art in a kind, compassionate way, and then pick fights about art all the goddamn time. Get people who will talk about art with you like you're an opponent in a board game. Be a bit of a curmudgeon, if you can do so kindly.
Don't try to change the world. Art is all talk. If the process of making and distributing your art feeds people, that's something you are doing rather than the art (and that's a very good thing).
Accept only perfection. Or at least a local maximum. Fight for something.
From personal experience, I'd like to throw on a few that are at least helpful to me.
Don't be afraid of the back burner: My big mecha heartbreaker game is my dream project and it's something I'm only now starting to feel like I'm ready to tackle. That being said, I work on it all the time. Making notes, trying mechanics, and switching things up. If I had forced it out all at once then I would probably hate it now. But I am willing to set it aside and work on other projects and come back to it. More than anything I've learned how to finish a project, which is an incredibly useful skill to hone.
When inspiration strikes- you go hard. If I have an idea for a project I will probably lose the next day or three dragging out everything I can about it. I know that I personally wind up working on multiple projects, so when my brain aligns onto something, I get everything I can out of it. It doesn't matter if this is good, but you want to get as much raw material as you can. You can refine it later. The other interesting thing here is that, you can just discover the size of your project here. I have a few smaller ttrpgs projects that are essentially done mechanically. I just need to write everything up and make it look pretty.
Not everything needs to be massive. The first game I ever fully designed was 8 pages. I am still very proud of it. And it's one of those projects that I sat down and banged out most of it in an afternoon, then refined it. To me it is still a perfect, little one-shot game. Not every project needs to be a novel, sometimes it can be a poem- even if it's just one evocative line. And having something done? That I can look back at and know, hey I did that. It is a little light to cling to when your brain is being a jerk.
Also, weird advice I heard from Bill Hader about Barry that has stuck with me as very useful. "Listen when people tell you something is wrong, and don't pay attention when they tell you how to fix it." If people notice that there's an issue, there probably is. But you don't need a suggested fix. It's your work and you'll know it best. Find a way to fix it that works for you. Don't compromise what makes your work personal and fulfilling to fit someone else's view of what works.
