Real Artists Don't Starve: Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the New Creative Age

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance. ...If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let y

In exploring new horizons, you may very well lose some fans. New fans may also appear. Whatever the case, the decision to limit your work to the familiar is a disservice to both yourself and your audience. The energy of wonder and discovery can get lost when treading the same ground over and over again.

That’s a powerful—and powerfully counterintuitive—way to think about your work. And the reason more people don’t think in this manner is because they are afraid. They’re afraid of carving their own path and finding nothing at the end of it. They’re overly concerned with the vanity and status consciousness of fans who are comfortable in the traditio

Who else will care about the painstaking details and the consistency and integrity and the other little matters that add up to separate the memorable from the mediocre? Who else has the financial interest or the incentives to put in the effort to take this all the way?