ignore everybody

(Like this? Check it out in the gallery here)

[Essen­tial Rea­ding: “Everything You Always Wan­ted To Know About ‘Cube Gre­na­des’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]

BIG NEWS: My new book, “Ignore Everybody“was launched June 11th, 2009. You can read the first 25% below, and you can order the book here:

Ama­zon.

Bar­nes & Noble.

Bor­ders.

800-CEO-READ. [great for bulk buys]

Indie­Bound. [to find an inde­pen­dent store]

[Update: “Ignore Every­body” is on Amazon’s Top 10 Editor’s Picks, Busi­ness Books of 2009.]

IGNORE EVERYBODY

So you want to be more crea­tive, in art, in busi­ness, wha­te­ver. Here are some tips that have wor­ked for me over the years.]

1. Ignore everybody.

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.
3. Put the hours in.
4. If your biz plan depends on you sud­denly being “dis­co­ve­red” by some big shot, your plan will pro­bably fail.
5. You are res­pon­si­ble for your own expe­rience.
6. Ever­yone is born crea­tive; ever­yone is given a box of cra­yons in kin­der­gar­ten.
7. Keep your day job.
8. Com­pa­nies that squelch crea­ti­vity can no lon­ger com­pete with com­pa­nies that cham­pion crea­ti­vity.
9. Every­body has their own pri­vate Mount Eve­rest they were put on this earth to climb.
10. The more talen­ted some­body is, the less they need the props.
11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds alto­gether.
12. If you accept the pain, it can­not hurt you.
13. Never com­pare your inside with some­body else’s outside.
14. Dying young is ove­rra­ted.
15. The most impor­tant thing a crea­tive per­son can learn pro­fes­sio­nally is where to draw the red line that sepa­ra­tes what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
16. The world is chan­ging.
17. Merit can be bought. Pas­sion can’t.
18. Avoid the Water­coo­ler Gang.
19. Sing in your own voice.
20. The choice of media is irre­le­vant.
21. Selling out is har­der than it looks.
22. Nobody cares. Do it for your­self.
23. Worr­ying about “Com­mer­cial vs. Artis­tic” is a com­plete waste of time.
24. Don’t worry about fin­ding ins­pi­ra­tion. It comes even­tually.
25. You have to find your own sch­tick.
26. Write from the heart.
27. The best way to get appro­val is not to need it.
28. Power is never given. Power is taken.
29. Wha­te­ver choice you make, The Devil gets his due even­tually.
30. The har­dest part of being crea­tive is get­ting used to it.
31. Remain fru­gal.
32. Allow your work to age with you.
33. Being Poor Sucks.
34. Beware of tur­ning hob­bies into jobs.
35. Savor obs­cu­rity while it lasts.
36. Start blog­ging.
37. Mea­ning Sca­les, Peo­ple Don’t.
37. When your dreams become rea­lity, they are no lon­ger your dreams.

MORE:

1. Ignore everybody.

The more ori­gi­nal your idea is, the less good advice other peo­ple will be able to give you. When I first star­ted with the cartoon-on-back-of-bizcard for­mat, peo­ple thought I was nuts. Why wasn’t I trying to do something more easy for mar­kets to digest i.e. cutey-pie gree­ting cards or whatever?

You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s crea­ted. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut fee­ling that it is. And trus­ting your fee­lings is not as easy as the opti­mists say it is. There’s a rea­son why fee­lings scare us.
And asking close friends never works quite as well as you hope, either. It’s not that they deli­be­ra­tely want to be unhelp­ful. It’s just they don’t know your world one millionth as well as you know your world, no mat­ter how hard they try, no mat­ter how hard you try to explain.
Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they don’t want you to change. If you change, then their dyna­mic with you also chan­ges. They like things the way they are, that’s how they love you– the way you are, not the way you may become.
Ergo, they have no incen­tive to see you change. And they will be resis­tant to anything that cataly­zes it. That’s human nature. And you would do the same, if the shoe was on the other foot.
With busi­ness collea­gues it’s even worse. They’re used to dea­ling with you in a cer­tain way. They’re used to having a cer­tain level of con­trol over the rela­tionship. And they want wha­te­ver makes them more pros­pe­rous. Sure, they might pre­fer it if you pros­per as well, but that’s not their top prio­rity.
If your idea is so good that it chan­ges your dyna­mic enough to where you need them less, or God for­bid, THE MARKET needs them less, then they’re going to resist your idea every chance they can.
Again, that’s human nature.
GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED.
Good ideas come with a heavy bur­den. Which is why so few peo­ple have them. So few peo­ple can handle it.

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.

The sove­reignty you have over your work will ins­pire far more peo­ple than the actual con­tent ever will.

We all spend a lot of time being impres­sed by folk we’ve never met. Some­body fea­tu­red in the media who’s got a big com­pany, a big pro­duct, a big movie, a big bes­tse­ller. Wha­te­ver.
And we spend even more time trying unsuc­cess­fully to keep up with them. Trying to start up our own com­pa­nies, our own pro­ducts, our own film pro­jects, books and what­not.
I’m as guilty as anyone. I tried lots of dif­fe­rent things over the years, trying des­pe­ra­tely to pry my career out of the jaws of medioc­rity. Some to do with busi­ness, some to do with art etc.
One eve­ning, after one false start too many, I just gave up. Sit­ting at a bar, fee­ling a bit bur­ned out by work and life in gene­ral, I just star­ted dra­wing on the back of busi­ness cards for no rea­son. I didn’t really need a rea­son. I just did it because it was there, because it amu­sed me in a kind of ran­dom, arbi­trary way.
Of course it was stu­pid. Of course it was uncom­mer­cial. Of course it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Of course it was a com­plete and utter waste of time. But in retros­pect, it was this built-in futi­lity that gave it its edge. Because it was the exact oppo­site of all the “Big Plans” my peers and I were used to making. It was so libe­ra­ting not to have to be thin­king about all that, for a change.
It was so libe­ra­ting to be doing something that didn’t have to impress any­body, for a change.
It was so libe­ra­ting to be doing something that didn’t have to have some sort of com­mer­cial angle, for a change.
It was so libe­ra­ting to have something that belon­ged just to me and no one else, for a change.
It was so libe­ra­ting to feel com­plete sove­reignty, for a change. To feel com­plete free­dom, for a change.
And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world star­ted paying atten­tion.
The sove­reignty you have over your work will ins­pire far more peo­ple than the actual con­tent ever will. How your own sove­reignty ins­pi­res other peo­ple to find their own sove­reignty, their own sense of free­dom and pos­si­bi­lity, will give the work far more power than the work’s objec­tive merits ever will.
Your idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more free­dom you have to do something really ama­zing.
The more ama­zing, the more peo­ple will click with your idea. The more peo­ple click with your idea, the more this little thing of yours will snow­ball into a big thing.
That’s what dood­ling on busi­ness cards taught me.

3. Put the hours in.

Doing anything worthwhile takes fore­ver. 90% of what sepa­ra­tes suc­cess­ful peo­ple and fai­led peo­ple is time, effort, and stamina.

I get asked a lot, “Your busi­ness card for­mat is very sim­ple. Aren’t you worried about some­body rip­ping it off?“
Stan­dard Ans­wer: Only if they can draw more of them than me, bet­ter than me.
What gives the work its edge is the sim­ple fact that I’ve spent years dra­wing them. I’ve drawn thou­sands. Tens of thou­sands of man hours.
So if some­body wants to rip my idea off, go ahead. If some­body wants to over­take me in the busi­ness card doodle wars, go ahead. You’ve got many long years in front of you. And unlike me, you won’t be doing it for the joy of it. You’ll be doing it for some self-loathing, ill-informed, lame-ass mer­ce­nary rea­son. So the years will be even lon­ger and far, far more pain­ful. Lucky you.
If some­body in your industry is more suc­cess­ful than you, it’s pro­bably because he works har­der at it than you do. Sure, maybe he’s more inhe­rently talen­ted, more adept at net­wor­king etc, but I don’t con­si­der that an excuse. Over time, that advan­tage counts for less and less. Which is why the world is full of highly talen­ted, network-savvy, fai­led medioc­ri­ties.
So yeah, suc­cess means you’ve got a long road ahead of you, regard­less. How do you best manage it?
Well, as I’ve writ­ten elsewhere, don’t quit your day job. I didn’t. I work every day at the office, same as any other regu­lar sch­moe. I have a long com­mute on the train, ergo that’s when I do most of my dra­wing. When I was youn­ger I drew mostly while sit­ting at a bar, but that got old.
The point is; an hour or two on the train is very mana­ga­ble for me. The fact I have a job means I don’t feel pres­su­red to do something market-friendly. Ins­tead, I get to do wha­te­ver the hell I want. I get to do it for my own satis­fac­tion. And I think that makes the work more power­ful in the long run. It also makes it easier to carry on with it in a calm fashion, day-in-day out, and not go crazy in insane crea­tive bursts brought on by money worries.
The day job, which I really like, gives me something pro­duc­tive and inte­res­ting to do among fellow adults. It gets me out of the house in the day time. If I were a pro­fes­sio­nal car­too­nist I’d just be chai­ned to a dra­wing table at home all day, scrib­bling out a living in silence, inte­rrup­ted only by fre­qent trips to the cof­fee shop. No, thank you.
Simply put, my method allows me to pace myself over the long haul, which is impor­tant.
Sta­mina is utterly impor­tant. And sta­mina is only pos­si­ble if it’s mana­ged well. Peo­ple think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free crea­tive burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stu­pidly wrong.
Being good at anything is like figure ska­ting– the defi­ni­tion of being good at it is being able to make it look easy. But it never is easy. Ever. That’s what the stu­pidly wrong peo­ple cove­niently for­get.
If I was just star­ting out wri­ting, say, a novel or a screen­play, or maybe star­ting up a new soft­ware com­pany, I wouldn’t try to quit my job in order to make this big, dra­ma­tic heroic-quest thing about it.
I would do something far sim­pler: I would find that extra hour or two in the day that belongs to nobody else but me, and I would make it pro­duc­tive. Put the hours in, do it for long enough and magi­cal, life-transforming things hap­pen even­tually. Sure, that means less time watching TV, inter­net sur­fing, going out or wha­te­ver.
But who cares?

4. If your biz plan depends on you sud­denly being “dis­co­ve­red” by some big shot, your plan will pro­bably fail.

Nobody sud­denly dis­co­vers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.

I was offe­red a quite subs­tan­tial publishing deal a year or two ago. Tur­ned it down. The com­pany sent me a con­tract. I loo­ked it over. Hmmmm…
Called the com­pany back. Asked for some cla­ri­fi­ca­tions on some points in the con­tract. Never heard back from them. The deal died.
This was a very res­pec­ted com­pany. You may have even heard of it.
They just assu­med I must be just like all the other peo­ple they repre­sent– hungry and des­pe­rate and willing to sign anything.
They wan­ted to own me, regard­less of how good a job they did.
That’s the thing about some big publishers. They want 110% from you, but they don’t offer to do like­wise in return. To them, the artist is just one more noodle in a big bowl of pasta.
Their busi­ness model is to basi­cally throw the pasta against the wall, and see which one sticks. The ones that fall to the floor are just for­got­ten.
Publishers are just midd­le­men. That’s all. If artists could remem­ber that more often, they’d save them­sel­ves a lot of aggre­va­tion.
Any­way, yeah, I can see gaping­void being a ‘pro­duct’ one day. Books, T-shirts and what­not. I think it could make a lot of money, if hand­led correctly. But I’m not afraid to walk away if I think the per­son offe­ring it is full of hot air. I’ve already got my groove etc. Not to men­tion another career that’s doing quite well, thank you.
I think “gaping­void as pro­duct line” idea is pretty ine­vi­ta­ble, down the road. Watch this space.

5. You are res­pon­si­ble for your own experience.

Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, mea­ning­ful or worthwhile. The more com­pe­lling the path, the more lonely it is.

Every crea­tive per­son is loo­king for “The Big Idea”. You know, the one that is going to cata­pult them out from the murky depths of obs­cu­rity and on to the highest pla­nes of incan­des­cent ludi­city.
The one that’s all love-at-first-sight with the Zeit­geist.
The one that’s going to get them invi­ted to all the right par­ties, metapho­ri­cal or other­wise.
So natu­rally you ask your­self, if and when you finally come up with The Big Idea, after years of toil, strug­gle and doubt, how do you know whether or not it is “The One”?
Ans­wer: You don’t.
There’s no glo­rious swe­lling of exis­ten­tial triumph.
That’s not what hap­pens.
All you get is this rather kvetchy voice inside you that seems to say, “This is totally stupid.This is utterly moro­nic. This is a com­plete waste of time. I’m going to do it any­way.“
And you go do it any­way.
Second-rate ideas like glo­rious swe­llings far more. Keeps them alive lon­ger.

6. Ever­yone is born crea­tive; ever­yone is given a box of cra­yons in kindergarten.

Then when you hit puberty they take the cra­yons away and replace them with books on alge­bra etc. Being sud­denly hit years later with the crea­tive bug is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my cra­yons back, please.”

So you’ve got the itch to do something. Write a screen­play, start a pain­ting, write a book, turn your recipe for fudge brow­nies into a pro­per busi­ness, wha­te­ver. You don’t know where the itch came from, it’s almost like it just arri­ved on your doors­tep, unin­vi­ted. Until now you were quite happy hol­ding down a real job, being a regu­lar per­son…
Until now.
You don’t know if you’re any good or not, but you’d think you could be. And the idea terri­fies you. The pro­blem is, even if you are good, you know nothing about this kind of busi­ness. You don’t know any publishers or agents or all these fancy-shmancy kind of folk. You have a friend who’s got a cou­sin in Cali­for­nia who’s into this kind of stuff, but you haven’t tal­ked to your friend for over two years…
Besi­des, if you write a book, what if you can’t find a publisher? If you write a screen­play, what if you can’t find a pro­du­cer? And what if the pro­du­cer turns out to be a crook? You’ve always wor­ked hard your whole life, you’ll be dam­ned if you’ll put all that effort into something if there ain’t no pot of gold at the end of this dumb-ass rain­bow…
Heh. That’s not your wee voice asking for the cra­yons back. That’s your outer voice, your adult voice, your boring & tedious voice trying to find a way to get the wee cra­yon voice to shut the hell up.
Your wee voice doesn’t want you to sell something. Your wee voice wants you to make something. There’s a big dif­fe­rence. Your wee voice doesn’t give a damn about publishers or Holly­wood pro­du­cers.
Go ahead and make something. Make something really spe­cial. Make something ama­zing that will really blow the mind of any­body who sees it.
If you try to make something just to fit your unin­for­med view of some hypothe­ti­cal mar­ket, you will fail. If you make something spe­cial and power­ful and honest and true, you will suc­ceed.
The wee voice didn’t show up because it deci­ded you need more money or you need to hang out with movie stars. Your wee voice came back because your soul somehow depends on it. There’s something you haven’t said, something you haven’t done, some light that needs to be switched on, and it needs to be taken care of. Now.
So you have to lis­ten to the wee voice or it will die… taking a big chunk of you along with it.
They’re only cra­yons. You didn’t fear them in kin­der­gar­ten, why fear them now?

7. Keep your day job.

I’m not just saying that for the usual rea­son i.e. because I think your idea will fail. I’m saying it because to sud­denly quit one’s job in a big ol’ crea­tive drama-queen moment is always, always, always in direct con­flict with what I call “The Sex & Cash Theory”.

THE SEX & CASH THEORY: “The crea­tive per­son basi­cally has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, crea­tive kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Some­ti­mes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense dua­lity will always play cen­ter stage. It will never be trans­cen­ded.“
A good exam­ple is Phil, a NY pho­to­grapher friend of mine. He does really wild stuff for the indie maga­zi­nes– it pays nothing, but it allows him to build his port­fo­lio. Then he’ll go off and shoot some cata­lo­gues for a while. Nothing too exci­ting, but it pays the bills.
Another exam­ple is some­body like Mar­tin Amis. He wri­tes “serious” novels, but he has to sup­ple­ment his income by wri­ting the occa­sio­nal news­pa­per article for the Lon­don papers (novel royal­ties are bloody pathe­tic– even bes­tse­llers like Amis aren’t immune).
Or actors. One year Tra­volta will be in an ultra-hip flick like Pulp Fic­tion (“Sex”), the next he’ll be in some dumb spy thri­ller (“Cash”).
Or pain­ters. You spend one month pain­ting blue pic­tu­res because that’s the color the cele­brity collec­tors are buying this sea­son (“Cash”), you spend the next month pain­ting red pic­tu­res because sec­retly you des­pise the color blue and love the color red (“Sex”).
Or geeks. You spend you week­days wri­ting code for a face­less cor­po­ra­tion (“Cash”), then you spend your eve­ning and wee­kends wri­ting anarchic, weird com­pu­ter games to amuse your techie friends with (“Sex”).
It’s balan­cing the need to make a good living while still main­tai­ning one’s crea­tive sove­reignty. My M.O. is gaping­void (“Sex”), cou­pled with my day job (“Cash”).
I’m thin­king about the young wri­ter who has to wait tables to pay the bills, in spite of her wri­ting appea­ring in all the cool and hip maga­zi­nes.… who dreams of one day of not having her life divi­ded so harshly.
Well, over time the ‘harshly’ bit might go away, but not the ‘divi­ded’.
“This tense dua­lity will always play cen­ter stage. It will never be trans­cen­ded.“
As soon as you accept this, I mean really accept this, for some rea­son your career starts moving ahead fas­ter. I don’t know why this hap­pens. It’s the peo­ple who refuse to cleave their lives this way– who just want to start Day One by quit­ting their current crappy day job and moving straight on over to best-selling author… Well, they never make it.
Any­way, it’s called “The Sex & Cash Theory”. Keep it under your pillow.

8. Com­pa­nies that squelch crea­ti­vity can no lon­ger com­pete with com­pa­nies that cham­pion creativity.

Nor can you bully a subor­di­nate into beco­ming a genius.

Since the modern, scientifically-conceived cor­po­ra­tion was inven­ted in the early half of the Twen­tieth Cen­tury, crea­ti­vity has been sac­ri­fi­ced in favor of for­war­ding the inte­rests of the “Team Pla­yer”.
Fair enough. There was more money in doing it that way; that’s why they did it.
There’s only one pro­blem. Team Pla­yers are not very good at crea­ting value on their own. They are not auto­no­mous; they need a team in order to exist.
So now cor­po­ra­tions are awash with non-autonomous thin­kers.
“I don’t know. What do you think?“
“I don’t know. What do you think?“
“I don’t know. What do you think?“
“I don’t know. What do you think?“
“I don’t know. What do you think?“
“I don’t know. What do you think?“
And so on.
Crea­ting an eco­no­mi­cally via­ble entity where lack of ori­gi­nal thought is hand­so­mely rewar­ded crea­tes a rich, fer­tile envi­ron­ment for para­si­tes to breed. And that’s exactly what’s been hap­pe­ning. So now we have millions upon millions of human tape­worms thri­ving in the Wes­tern World, making love to their Power­point pre­sen­ta­tions, feas­ting on the crea­ti­vity of others.
What hap­pens to an eco­logy, when the para­site level reaches cri­ti­cal mass?
The eco­logy dies.
If you’re crea­tive, if you can think inde­pen­dantly, if you can arti­cu­late pas­sion, if you can ove­rride the fear of being wrong, then your com­pany needs you now more than it ever did. And now your com­pany can no lon­ger afford to pre­tend that isn’t the case.
So dust off your horn and start too­ting it. Exactly.
Howe­ver if you’re not pari­cu­larly crea­tive, then you’re in real trou­ble. And there’s no buzz­word or “new para­digm” that can help you. They may not have men­tio­ned this in busi­ness school, but… peo­ple like watching dino­saurs die.

9. Every­body has their own pri­vate Mount Eve­rest they were put on this earth to climb.

You may never reach the sum­mit; for that you will be for­gi­ven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find your­self lying on your death­bed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

This metapho­ri­cal Mount Eve­rest doesn’t have to mani­fest itself as “Art”. For some peo­ple, yes, it might be a novel or a pain­ting. But Art is just one path up the moun­tain, one of many. With others the path may be something more pro­saic. Making a million dollars, rai­sing a family, owning the most Bur­ger King franchi­ses in the Tri-State area, buil­ding some crazy over­si­zed model air­plane, the list has no end.
Wha­te­ver. Let’s talk about you now. Your moun­tain. Your pri­vate Mount Eve­rest. Yes, that one. Exactly.
Let’s say you never climb it. Do you have a pro­blem witb that? Can you just say to your­self, “Never mind, I never really wan­ted it any­way” and take up stamp collec­ting ins­tead?
Well, you could try. But I wouldn’t believe you. I think it’s not OK for you never to try to climb it. And I think you agree with me. Other­wise you wouldn’t have read this far.
So it looks like you’re going to have to climb the fric­kin’ moun­tain. Deal with it.
My advice? You don’t need my advice. You really don’t. The big­gest piece of advice I could give anyone would be this:

“Admit that your own pri­vate Mount Eve­rest exists. That is half the battle.”

And you’ve already done that. You really have. Other­wise, again, you wouldn’t have read this far.
Rock on.

10. The more talen­ted some­body is, the less they need the props.

Mee­ting a per­son who wrote a mas­ter­piece on the back of a deli menu would not sur­prise me. Mee­ting a per­son who wrote a mas­ter­piece with a sil­ver Car­tier foun­tain pen on an anti­que wri­ting table in an airy SoHo loft would SERIOUSLY sur­prise me.

Abraham Lin­coln wrote The Gettys­berg Address on a piece of ordi­nary sta­tio­nery that he had borro­wed from the friend whose house he was sta­ying at.
James Joyce wrote with a sim­ple pen­cil and note­book. Some­body else did the typing, but only much later.
Van Gough rarely pain­ted with more than six colors on his palette.
I draw on the back of wee biz cards. Wha­te­ver.
There’s no corre­la­tion bet­ween crea­ti­vity and equip­ment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.
Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more suc­cess­ful, his num­ber of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expen­ding men­tal energy on stuff was­tes time. He’s a man on a mis­sion. He’s got a dead­line. He’s got some rich client breathing down his neck. The last thing he wants is to spend 3 weeks lear­ning how to use a rou­ter drill if he doesn’t need to.
A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind.
Which is why there are so many second-rate art direc­tors with state-of-the-art Maci­notsh com­pu­ters.
Which is why there are so many hack wri­ters with state-of-the-art lap­tops.
Which is why there are so many crappy pho­to­graphers with state-of-the-art digi­tal came­ras.
Which is why there are so many unre­mar­ka­ble pain­ters with expen­sive stu­dios in trendy neigh­borhoods.
Hiding behind pillars, all of them.
Pillars do not help; they hin­der. The more mighty the pillar, the more you end up rel­ying on it psycho­lo­gi­cally, the more it gets in your way.
And this applies to busi­ness, as well.
Which is why there are so many fai­ling busi­nes­ses with fancy offi­ces.
Which is why there’s so many fai­ling busi­ness­men spen­ding a for­tune on fancy suits and expen­sive yacht club mem­berships.
Again, hiding behind pillars.
Suc­cess­ful peo­ple, artists and non-artists alike, are very good at spot­ting pillars. They’re very good at doing without them. Even more impor­tantly, once they’ve spot­ted a pillar, they’re very good at quickly get­ting rid of it.
Good pillar mana­ge­ment is one of the most valua­ble talents you can have on the pla­net. If you have it, I envy you. If you don’t, I pity you.
Sure, nobody’s per­fect. We all have our pillars. We seem to need them. You are never going to live a pillar-free exis­tence. Neither am I.
All we can do is keep asking the ques­tion, “Is this a pillar” about every aspect of our busi­ness, our craft, our rea­son for being alive etc and go from there. The more we ask, the bet­ter we get at spot­ting pillars, the more quickly the pillars vanish.
Ask. Keep asking. And then ask again. Stop asking and you’re dead.

11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

Your plan for get­ting your work out there has to be as ori­gi­nal as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new mar­ket. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hope­fuls, wai­ting for a miracle. All exis­ting busi­ness models are wrong. Find a new one.

I’ve seen it so many times. Call him Ted. A young kid in the big city, just off the bus, wan­ting to be a famous something: artist, wri­ter, musi­cian, film direc­tor, wha­te­ver. He’s full of fire, full of pas­sion, full of ideas. And you meet Ted again five or ten years later, and he’s still ten­ding bar at the same res­tau­rant. He’s not a kid any­more. But he’s still no clo­ser to his dream.
His voice is still as defiant as ever, cer­tainly, but there’s an emp­ti­ness to his words that wasn’t there before.
Yeah, well, Ted pro­bably chose a very well-trodden path. Write novel, be dis­co­ve­red, publish bes­tse­ller, sell movie rights, retire rich in 5 years. Or wha­te­ver.
No worries that there’s pro­bably 3 million other novelists/actors/musicians/painters etc with the same plan. But of course, Ted’s spe­cial. Of course his for­tune will defy the odds even­tually. Of course. That’s what he keeps telling you, as he refills your glass.
Is your plan of a simi­lar ilk? If it is, then I’d be con­cer­ned.
When I star­ted the busi­ness card car­toons I was lucky; at the time I had a pretty well-paid cor­po­rate job in New York that I liked. The idea of quit­ting it in order to join the ranks of Bohe­mia didn’t even occur to me. What, leave Manhat­tan for Brooklyn? Ha. Not bloody likely. I was just doing it to amuse myself in the eve­nings, to give me something to do at the bar while I wai­ted for my date to show up or wha­te­ver.
There was no com­me­ri­cal incen­tive or lar­ger agenda gover­ning my actions. If I wan­ted to draw on the back of a busi­ness card ins­tead of a “pro­per” medium, I could. If I wan­ted to use a four let­ter word, I could. If I wan­ted to ditch the stan­dard figu­ra­tive for­mat and draw psycho­tic abs­trac­tions ins­tead, I could. There was no flashy media or publishing exe­cu­tive to keep happy. And even bet­ter, there was no artist-lifestyle archetype to con­form to.
It gave me a lot of free­dom. That free­dom paid off in spa­des later.
Ques­tion how much free­dom your path affords you. Be utterly ruth­less about it.
It’s your free­dom that will get you to where you want to go. Blind faith in an over-subscribed, vain­glo­rious myth will only hin­der you.
Is you plan uni­que? Is there nobody else doing it? Then I’d be exci­ted. A little sca­red, maybe, but exci­ted.

12. If you accept the pain, it can­not hurt you.
The pain of making the neces­sary sac­ri­fi­ces always hurts more than you think it’s going to. I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously crea­tive is one of the most ama­zing expe­rien­ces one can have, in this or any other life­time. If you can pull it off, it’s worth it. Even if you don’t end up pulling it off, you’ll learn many inc­re­di­ble, magi­cal, valua­ble things. It’s NOT doing it when you know you full well you HAD the oppor­tu­nity– that hurts FAR more than any failure.

Frankly, I think you’re bet­ter off doing something on the assump­tion that you will NOT be rewar­ded for it, that it will NOT receive the recog­ni­tion it deser­ves, that it will NOT be worth the time and effort inves­ted in it.
The obvious advan­tage to this angle is, of course, if anything good comes of it, then it’s an added bonus.
The second, more subtle and pro­found advan­tage is: that by scup­pe­ring all hope of worldly and social bet­ter­ment from the crea­tive act, you are finally left with only one ques­tion to ans­wer:
Do you make this damn thing exist or not?
And once you can ans­wer that truth­fully to your­self, the rest is easy.

[To read the remain­der of IGNORE EVERYBODY– 40 chap­ters in all– please go check out the book, Thanks!

[Essen­tial Rea­ding: “Everything You Always Wan­ted To Know About ‘Cube Gre­na­des’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]