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

by Jeff Goins

The lesson is that when we find ourselves on the outskirts of a community we long to be part of, we have options. 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.

To begin, put yourself in the places where creativity is already happening. Show up and be seen. Go to a coffee shop or a conference or maybe make the move to a new city altogether. Join the scene, and find that group of people you need to succeed. Just as Hemingway sought out key influencers in Paris, you can seek the influencers and gatekeepers in your own industry. Impress them, become their apprentices, and let them teach you. Win them over, and these people will welcome you into the scene.

THE STARVING ARTIST WORKS ALONE. THE THRIVING ARTIST COLLABORATES WITH OTHERS.

This is the Rule of Collaboration, which says genius happens in groups. Starving Artists work alone, but Thriving Artists collaborate with others.

At times we all feel a little competitive. We may even experience a slight twinge of jealousy of a friend’s success or feel threatened by it. It does no good to wish such feelings away. Instead, use that energy. Let it drive you to create and do better work. You don’t need to fear the accomplishments of others, but don’t ignore other people’s success either. Pay attention to what your peers are doing, and then let that awareness sharpen your focus so that you can improve. Great work does not happen in a vacuum. We must have an awareness of what others are doing and a certain level of competition to keep us sharp and continually growing as artists.

THE STARVING ARTIST DOESN’T SHARE HIS WORK. THE THRIVING ARTIST PRACTICES IN PUBLIC.

SOMETIMES OUR MOST OBVIOUS GIFTS ARE THE HARDEST FOR US TO RECOGNIZE.

The novelist George Sand once wrote that it is the duty of all artists “to find an adequate expression to convey [their art] to as many souls as possible.” Or to put it more succinctly: art needs an audience.

PROMOTION ISN’T SOMETHING AN ARTIST AVOIDS; IT’S AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THE JOB.

Montmartre was a community of artists who sacrificed themselves for their work, giving up worldly comforts so they could create something pure. Some even wore this suffering as a badge of honor, believing it somehow made their work better. Among these artists was a young man from Spain who began his career drawing prostitutes and clowns he met in the cabarets and cafés. He once said his goal was to “live like a pauper, but with plenty of money.” The artist’s name was Pablo Ruiz Picasso.

This brings us to the Rule of the Audience, which says that before art can have an impact, it must first have an audience. No one is exempt from this rule, not even Picasso.

THERE IS NO BETTER WAY TO IMPROVE THAN TO PUT YOUR WORK OUT THERE, NO OTHER WAY TO GET DISCOVERED THAN TO RISK REJECTION.

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.

Thriving Artists do not wait for these opportunities to share; they seek them out.

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

EVEN THE MOST GENEROUS OF AUDIENCES WILL NOT TOLERATE AN AMATEUR.

IF WE ARE GOING TO THRIVE AS ARTISTS, WE CANNOT MERELY SURVIVE. We have to make a living off our creations, which means at some point we need to talk about the part we’re all uncomfortable discussing: money. The Starving Artist avoids this at all costs, but the Thriving Artist understands that business is part of art and even money is something an artist must master.

THE STARVING ARTIST WORKS FOR FREE. THE THRIVING ARTIST ALWAYS WORKS FOR SOMETHING.

Creative success is about getting to do your work without constraint. Money is not the point, but it is part of the road we all must walk to become professionals. Charging brings dignity to our work. It validates our offering to the world. And it allows us to keep working.

You have to be willing to do the job of an artist, which includes more than just making things—it means charging what you’re worth. CHARGING BRINGS DIGNITY TO OUR WORK.

Working for free is not the “opportunity” we often think it is. Opportunity doesn’t pay the bills. Exposure won’t put food on the table. And working for free sets a bad precedent that’s hard to break later. If you want to stop starving, you can’t continue doing favors for people and expect it to lead to anything other than bankruptcy.

Becoming a Thriving Artist is not just about making a living; it’s about setting your work up for success. Money becomes the means to doing more work.

Don’t make a habit of working for free. Without money, you don’t get to make more art. Try to always work for something, even if that something is the chance to do work that pays. But be very careful here, because it can be easy to set a bad precedent that you don’t value your work. And if you don’t, neither will anyone else. So, charging what you’re worth begins with the belief that you’re worth what you charge.

CHARGING WHAT YOU’RE WORTH BEGINS WITH THE BELIEF THAT YOU’RE WORTH WHAT YOU CHARGE.

Some artists tend to think making money is either a system you sell out to or something to be avoided altogether. But in reality, it’s neither. If you don’t make money, you won’t have any art to make. We must seek to better understand the business of being an artist. Ignoring this reality is the fastest route to stop creating altogether. To be an artist is to be an entrepreneur. We must learn to embrace this tension and the beauty that comes from it.

THE STARVING ARTIST SELLS OUT TO AN EARLY BIDDER. THE THRIVING ARTIST OWNS HIS WORK.

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. —NIETZSCHE

There was risk on both sides, as there always is, but one clearly had a much bigger potential payoff. Shakespeare took the risk and gave up the security of being a freelancer to become an owner, and the following year was one of the most important periods in his career. In 1599 he became the Bard, writing some of his greatest works, including Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, and Julius Caesar. And it all began with a decision to buy in to a small but scrappy acting company that allowed him to retain his independence and share in the rewards. In our own creative careers, we will face similar decisions, and we must remember that our primary job as artists is to make sure we can continue creating our art.

For any creative, the challenge of earning a living is formidable. We need to sell our work in order to live and eat, but if we sell off everything we create, we can end up starving again. The goal is to not live month to month, but to have enough margin to keep creating. The more you own of your work, the more creative control you have. The Starving Artist sells out to an early bidder, but the Thriving Artist holds out and owns as much of his work as possible. This is the Rule of Ownership. As creatives, our job is not only to create great works but to protect those works. We must, therefore, resist the temptation to sell out too soon. Settling for a nice payday can lead to short-term success, but it won’t buy the kind of legacy we want. We must think long term if we want the kind of freedom that allows us to create what we want while still reaping the rewards of our creation. We all desire a long and prosperous career, one that will hopefully endure after we are gone. The way we ensure the future success of our work is to own the work.

THE STARVING ARTIST SELLS OUT TO AN EARLY BIDDER, BUT THE THRIVING ARTIST OWNS AS MUCH OF HIS WORK AS POSSIBLE.

THE CHIEF GOAL OF EVERY ARTIST IS TO MAKE THE WORK GREAT.

WHILE GATEKEEPERS MAY GIVE YOU A PAYDAY, IT ALWAYS COMES WITH A COST. SOMETIMES THE BIG BREAK CAN BE A BIG TRAP.

Had he looked at the careers of other successful artists, Stephen might have seen a theme: when you own your work, you get to call the shots. And when you trust the system fully, there may come a time when the system no longer needs you.

When The Empire Strikes Back hit the box office, it grossed four times what Star Wars did in the opening weekend and would go on to make more than half a billion dollars worldwide, proving to Hollywood and the rest of the world that the film franchise was here to stay. Because George Lucas took the risk, he got the reward, which was something he would do for the rest of his career. With every new film and project, he would continue to gamble on each new creation, sometimes going nearly bankrupt to do so, but always coming out the winner. He would never leave the fate of his creative work up to anyone other than himself. In the case of Star Wars, ownership made Lucas billions of dollars. But it was never about the money. It was always about the work. The success of Star Wars allowed Lucas to make The Empire Strikes Back on his own terms, and the money he made from the film helped fund the creation of Skywalker Ranch, a place he envisioned as a getaway for filmmakers to dream and create. None of this, however, would have happened had he not fought for control of his work.

This is what ownership does. It gives you options. The Starving Artist tends to trust the system and hope for the best, but that’s a bad idea. “The object,” Lucas said, “is to try and make the system work for you, instead of against you.” The safest place for your work to stay is with you. No one has a more vested interest in your success than you do. Don’t trust the system to take care of you; that’s not what it was designed to do. Do whatever it takes to own your work; fight to keep the control. Failure to do this will most likely hurt you far more than it will help.

Someone must own the work, and that someone might as well be you. As the musician Prince once put it, “If you don’t own your masters, your master owns you.”

IT’S NOT THAT SELLING OUT IS BAD. JUST DON’T SELL OUT TOO SOON.

IN THE END, BEING AN ARTIST IS ABOUT CREATING GREAT WORK, AND OWNERSHIP IS THE WAY WE GET TO ENSURE THAT GREATNESS.

THE STARVING ARTIST MASTERS ONE CRAFT. THE THRIVING ARTIST MASTERS MANY.

Your art is never beholden to a single form. You can always change and evolve, and the best artists do this regularly. They understand that in order to thrive, you have to master more than one skill. 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.

Business philosopher Charles Handy called this class of workers who juggle more than one thing at a time “portfolio people” and predicted soon we would all be living these kinds of lives. It seems we are now living in that reality.

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. The challenge, then, is knowing what investments to make and when. YOUR ART IS NEVER BEHOLDEN TO A SINGLE FORM. YOU CAN ALWAYS CHANGE AND EVOLVE, AND THE BEST ARTISTS DO THIS REGULARLY.

To spot the right places to invest your time and resources, you need what Dr. Darya Zabelina calls a “leaky mental filter.” 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.”

Starving Artists try to master one skill. Thriving Artists acquire whatever skills necessary to get the job done. One is about short-term rewards; the other is about creating for a lifetime. If you don’t believe the myth that mastery is just doing one thing, then you, too, can create a body of work that will endure.

Being distractible can be a strength in creative work. When we understand that an open mind can guide us into new possibilities, we don’t have to try to change ourselves into being more organized or “responsible.” Instead, we can use our creative quirks to our advantage, helping us identify opportunities to do fulfilling work that we would have otherwise missed.

THE STARVING ARTIST DESPISES THE NEED FOR MONEY. THE THRIVING ARTIST MAKES MONEY TO MAKE ART.

MONEY IS THE MEANS TO MAKING ART, BUT IT MUST NEVER BE THE MASTER.

In 1983, Lewis Hyde published a book called The Gift, which has since become a modern classic and underground bestseller among creatives. The book explains why many modern artists struggle to make a living off their work: art is a gift, and since we now live in a market economy, there is going to be a disconnect. In the market, people don’t pay for gifts; they pay for commodities. So you must find a way to get paid for the art. There are three ways to do this. First is that path of the commercial artist in which you sell your art directly to the market. “It’s a wonderful day when an artist can do their work and make money off of it,” Hyde told me. This is not impossible, but it is far from the norm. Second is the traditional patronage model where a wealthy benefactor is willing to pay for your livelihood as you do your work. Again, this is a rare occasion and not something to count on. Third is the path of self-patronage in which you find a way to support the work yourself. “The most common solution to the disconnect between art and commerce,” Hyde explained, “is to get a second job. And for most artists, the second job is teaching your own art.” There is, of course, a fourth solution in which the artist chooses poverty and creates from a place of struggle and strife. But this is the least favorable option and far from the wisest. “I have no interest in starving artists,” Hyde told me. “I think artists should be well fed. I think artists should be as well paid as doctors a...

The Starving Artist despises the need for money, but the Thriving Artist uses money to make more art.

This is the Rule of the Gift, which says that if art is your duty, then you must create. The nature of a gift is that it is to be given away, so the first duty of an artist is to do your work. There is a spirit of generosity in every creative act, but to embody this generosity we cannot starve. We must be creating with full bellies and full souls, and so the second duty of an artist is to make money to make art.