"How do you memorize all of that music and foreign text?" This is a question I often got from my father and also from people who would come to a performance. I answered that it is something I do all of the time. Memorization is not a sometime thing and neither is being an artist. Being an artist means you are practicing it pretty much all of the time.
Being 'prolific' is really what being great at anything is all about. Because the word is an adjective it is used to describe something in a way that has to do with growth and consistent work. The "use it or lose it" adage applies to the act of developing a skill and then how to lose it. Nothing persists without a constant support keeping it going.
When we think of the great masters of art and their masterworks we think of very few pieces for each artist. Masters produce many works that didn't necessarily become masterpiece's but were all building blocks towards them. When you try and create anything it is always a work in progress. You can't know which piece will become a masterpiece but work on each piece as if it were going to be a masterpiece. Who works on something with the idea of it being anything less than their best? Nobody knowingly goes out and produces junk.
One of the most difficult decisions in life is to chose one thing to work on. It has to capture your whole being in order to be great at it and the sooner you chose it in life the better. It has to be something that dominates your being in such a way that compels you to work on it day in and day out.
One of the most important aspects of becoming something great is that you don't do it for the money. Yes, you have to make money in life but if money is your goal then becoming something great, unless it is a finance person who uses money as their creative bent, then you will always be evaluating your progress based on something that has nothing to do with money.
To be prolific you have to be productive. This means you need to produce something tangible with your art. It is the number of tangible works that defines an artist and not necessarily the monetary value of it. The quality of a work isn't determined by the popularity or notoriety of it but by the quality of the work itself. Who knows if something is going to become popular? Nobody knows that. But, the artist that produces more works has a higher chance of creating something popular than someone who just does it every now and then.
No matter how great the artist is, only a handful of works could be called 'popular' and that doesn't necessarily mean those pieces are their actual greatest works. Consistent work is the only way to raise the level of the work. It probably won't get better unless you get better.
If I want to become a great writer then I need to write more 'things' like books or articles that are published and not just my blog posts or my website.