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

by Jeff Goins

If we want to become artists, we are going to have to break some rules. We cannot do just what is expected of us. At some point, we must break away from the status quo and forge a new path. As it turns out, this is how creativity works best.

If you aren’t willing to be a little deviant, then it’s harder to be creative. Sometimes it pays to break the rules.

Eventually, you have to decide who you are. You have to choose your role and own that identity. We don’t fake it till we make it. We believe it till we become it.

When you are in a season of life when you can’t dedicate hours a day to your craft, it can feel like you’re standing still. But at those times, when the odds are overwhelming and the busyness is suffocating, you still have something to give. The effort may seem small and insignificant, but the work adds up.

The study conducted by Joseph Raffiee and Jie Feng lasted until 2008 and followed five thousand American entrepreneurs who either “took the leap” and quit their day jobs or kept them. And the results surprised them, defying what we might think the typical entrepreneurial success looks like. In the end, the more cautious entrepreneurs ended up being the more successful ones, whereas the risk takers who quit their jobs early were 33 percent more likely to fail.

You don’t become an artist by moving to New York City without a penny to your name. You become an artist because you decide that’s what you’re going to be, and then you do the work.

the creative life is a series of small steps more than any single giant leap.

The first step to doing creative work is just that—a step, not a leap or an epiphany—just one small decision that leads to the next one. Sure, some people may risk it all and end up winning, but those are the exceptions to the rule, and that kind of success is often short-lived. The alternative—doing something so small and gradual that it almost looks like you’re doing nothing—often leads to much more sustainable success.

You can do extraordinary things when you are patiently persistent.

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master,” Hemingway mused.

Our first job as artists, then, is to venture out, away from what we think we know in search of the new and unexplored. Great artists do this their entire lives, never staying stuck in a single style even when it brings wealth and fame. We must always be striving to reinvent ourselves, continuing to build on who we are and what we’ve done.

The historian Will Durant once wrote, “Nothing is new except arrangement.” Even that quote is not new, however, hearkening back to the biblical line that there is “nothing new under the sun.” What we perceive as original is often just a rearrangement of what has come before. This is especially true for creativity.

According to researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, creative work is comprised of five steps: preparation, incubation, insight, evaluation, and elaboration.

Creativity is not about being original; it’s about learning to rearrange what has already been in a way that brings fresh insight to old material.

The best artists steal, but they do so elegantly, borrowing ideas from many sources and arranging them in new and interesting ways. You have to know your craft so well that you can build on the work of your predecessors, adding to the body of existing work.

Of course, we all want to be original—no one wants to be accused of being a copycat. But the Starving Artist worries about being original, whereas the Thriving Artist knows that stealing from your influences is how you make great art.

The most creative minds in the world are not especially creative; they’re just better at rearrangement. In order to do that, they have to be familiar with their influences. They have to study before they steal. Yes, before you become an artist, you must become a thief; but even before you do that, you must first become a student.

The way you establish your authority in a certain field is by mastering the techniques of those who are already authorities. And what eventually emerges over time is your own style.

The difference between an artist and a copycat is that the artist builds on the work she has received and the copycat only mimics it.

Curate before you create.

This is most of what an apprenticeship is: watching, listening, and being present in the process. You experience by doing, and you internalize those lessons.

SKILL IS NOT ENOUGH TO EARN THE ATTENTION OF AN INFLUENCER—YOU MUST BE TEACHABLE.

Artists starve because they think they can make it on their own, ignoring the need for a teacher. Thriving Artists, on the other hand, are both humble enough to admit their need and audacious enough to seek it out. Great work is not a result of luck but of a willingness to become an apprentice.

We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details. —JEFF BEZOS

AN ARTIST’S JOB IS NOT TO BE PERFECT BUT TO BE CREATING.

A little tenacity can fuel our pursuit of excellence, giving us the grit we need to create lasting work.

Starving Artists disdain the need for patrons. It feels disempowering, even beneath them. On the other hand, Thriving Artists respect the Rule of the Patron and use it to their advantage. All creative workers need influencers who will vouch for them to an audience who doesn’t know them yet.

You can’t just ask for a handout; you must demonstrate both competency in your craft and a willingness to learn.

Later when I pressed him for why he said yes to our initial coffee meeting, he told me it was because he had read my writing and liked it. He told me what made it easy for him to say yes was the convenience factor (we lived in the same town), the potential I had (I was already doing the work), and a lack of neediness on my part (I just wanted to meet him for coffee).

Despite offers from other tech firms in larger cities, the young man decided on a city known for its progressive politics and eclectic culture because he believed that was where he’d do his best work. This student is part of what Richard Florida calls the Creative Class, a growing group of professionals that are quickly becoming an important part of society. This growing group of creative workers now makes up a third of the labor force, working in a wide range of industries from technology to entertainment, journalism to finance, and manufacturing to the arts. And one of the most important issues for a member of the Creative Class is location.

As social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote, “Creativity is more likely in places where new ideas require less effort to be perceived.”

Thriving Artists do not succeed in a vacuum. They put themselves in the right places and avail themselves of the opportunities there. They don’t try to create just anywhere—that would be foolish. After all, not all places are created equal, so Thriving Artists go where the magic is. But this takes more than moving to a new city. You have to join a scene, wherever you find one, and that means making connections with the people who will help your work succeed. In other words, you have to build a network.

Like Tracy Weisel did, we can create the places we need for our work to thrive. So, when we think about where the next “genius cluster” will happen, we may want to look first at the unlikely places in our lives and make the most of the opportunities there.

For years, I longed to be a writer but felt frustrated by my lack of opportunity. Then something changed: I started to embrace my place. Instead of waiting for someone to invite me to something, I began showing up where creative work was already happening. Having moved to Nashville to chase a girl, I noticed how many authors, creatives, and entrepreneurs were emerging from this small but growing city. I started showing up in coffee shops where I knew other writers spent their time. I attended local meet-ups where entrepreneurs and creatives were gathering. The more I engaged with that scene, the more I became part of it, and that soon resulted in friendships that over time grew into a network.

If we allow ourselves to accept the new definition of artist not as a lone genius but as a visionary who brings people and resources together, this creates opportunities for our work to flourish. The New Renaissance is not about working in isolation; it’s about finding more ways to collaborate with other like-minded creatives. Our success is closely related to our ability to work well with others.

Whatever it is, we won’t do our best work without a community that understands our work and can hold us accountable. We need people who resonate with our art and have the courage to tell us when we can do better.

If you want to do world-changing creative work, you must reconcile the fact that you likely won’t be able to do it alone. You need help. Find your band of misfits, use the accountability of that group, and let your sense of competition drive you to create better work.

Diana Glyer’s personal theory is that 92 percent of The Lord of the Rings was written on Wednesday nights, because J. R. R. Tolkien knew on Thursdays he’d have to face his friend C. S. Lewis and account for his work.

What launched Picasso’s career, transitioning him from obscure artist to one of the most famous painters of the twentieth century, was a willingness to put himself out there. He did not always reveal each step of his creative process, but practicing in public became a lifelong habit for the artist. While others were living in obscurity in Montmartre, he was planting his work where it had the greatest opportunity to flourish, and that’s something we all can do.

You don’t do your best work at rehearsal. You do your best when you have to: when you’re on stage in front of a live audience, when the publisher is waiting for the manuscript, when everyone is waiting for you to step up. Everything else is prologue.

TO DO THE WORK OF A PROFESSIONAL, YOU HAVE TO STOP WAITING TO BE SEEN AND START SHARING YOUR WORK NOW.

When we sincerely offer our gifts to the world, not through hype but by practicing in public, the world often repays us by first taking notice and then responding with loyalty. We get better, earning an audience that will allow us to continue creating for years to come.

When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss Money. —OSCAR WILDE

And here we are faced with an important principle, the Rule of Value: the Starving Artist works for free; the Thriving Artist always works for something. As artists, we must value our work before others will.

Art needs money. We can deny it all we want and pretend starving makes for better art, but starving often makes for no art at all. Paint costs money. Ink does too. So does food and just about everything else in life. You have to find a way to pay for your art if you want to keep making it.

This is the Rule of the Portfolio: the Starving Artist believes she must master a single skill, whereas the Thriving Artist builds a diverse body of work.

Starving Artists believe that to make a living you must make money off your art. But Thriving Artists don’t just live off their art. Like good investors, they keep diverse portfolios, relying on multiple income streams to make a living. Rarely do they go all in on any single area of work.

A researcher who teaches at Northwestern University, Dr. Zabelina has discovered a link between creative achievement and the ability to broaden a person’s attention. A leaky mental filter is the ability to hold multiple conflicting ideas in tension with each other in a way that they can build upon each other. “People with leaky attention might be able to notice things that others don’t notice or see connections between things,” she told me, “which might lead to a creative idea or creative thought.”

We don’t make art for the money. We make money so that we can make more art.

Walt Disney said, “I don’t make pictures just to make money. I make money to make more pictures.” This is what most of us want: not to get rich off our creations but to have enough time and freedom to create what we want. We want to have the means to focus on what matters to us.