MAKE GOOD ART by Neil Gaiman - Maybe one of the most creatively inspiring words you’ll hear ever or at least today!
If you are in any sort of artistic or creative field, or you aspire to be, you absolutely need to watch this!
Obviously you to NEED to watch the video, but thought I’d highlight some of his thoughts and comments that resonated with me the most.
There’s no need to introduce Neil Gaiman, you know who he is, and about the most amazing worlds he creates, (and if you don’t know, you need to get to know!) but in May he did something even more important, he gave back. Cause he’s a very nice man.
During an address to the University of the Arts Class of 2012, he not only explained what it was to be and live as a creative, and provided solid and invaluable advice for artists or any kind of creative, to be used at any stage in their life and career — but particularly when starting out - he also inspired, explaining how all that was needed was the desire to create to get you to your goals and achieve your dreams. These are my top 10 thoughts:
1. Don’t put so much weight into training. Neil never went to Uni!
2. If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that
3. Approach your creativity with joy, or else it becomes work. (I’m trying!)
4. Enjoy your work and your small victories; don’t get swept up into the next thing before being fully present with the joys of this one.
5. Embrace the fear of failure. Make peace with the Impostor Syndrome and the Fraud Police when it comes with success. Don’t be afraid of being wrong. (I’ll try to remember this when it hopefully happens)
6. The problems of failure are hard. – “The problems of failure are problems of discouragement, of hopelessness, of hunger. You want everything to happen and you want it now, and things go wrong”.
7. “The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them”
8. “Make your art, tell your story, find your voice — even if you begin by copying others. - The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that’s not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we’ve sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can”.
9. “Make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for you being here”.
10. “Make good art”.
“Make good art.
I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.
Make it on the good days too.”
Thanks Neil!
The full keynote text can be found here http://www.uarts.edu/neil-gaiman-keynote-address