0:00:00.695,0:00:03.046
Thank you.

0:00:04.584,0:00:09.193
i never really expected to find myself giving advice

0:00:10.101,0:00:15.519
to people graduating from an establishment of higher education.

0:00:15.519,0:00:19.755
i never graduated from any such establishment.

0:00:20.155,0:00:22.351
I've never even started at one!

0:00:22.351,0:00:24.628
I escaped from the school as soon as I could,

0:00:24.628,0:00:28.833
when the prospect of 4 more years of enforced learning before I'd

0:00:28.833,0:00:32.912
become a writer I wanted to be seemed stifling.

0:00:33.712,0:00:35.907
I got out into the world, I wrote,

0:00:35.907,0:00:37.793
and I became a better writer the more I wrote,

0:00:37.793,0:00:39.983
and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind

0:00:40.075,0:00:42.749
that I was making it up as I went along.

0:00:43.042,0:00:45.317
They just read what I wrote... and they paid me for it

0:00:45.317,0:00:46.864
(or they didn't)

0:00:47.818,0:00:51.473
and often they commissioned me to write something else for them.

0:00:51.611,0:00:57.542
Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education

0:00:57.542,0:01:02.509
that those of my friends and family, who attended universities, were cured of long ago.

0:01:03.402,0:01:06.792
Looking back... I've had a remarkable ride.

0:01:06.792,0:01:13.352
I'm not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies that I had some kind of a career plan

0:01:14.214,0:01:15.747
(and I never did)

0:01:15.917,0:01:21.514
The nearest thing that I had was a list I made when I was about 15 of everything I wanted to do

0:01:22.253,0:01:24.923
I wanted to write an adult novel, a children's book,

0:01:24.923,0:01:31.327
a comic, a movie, record an audio book, an episode of Dr. Who and so on.

0:01:31.712,0:01:34.900
I didn't have a career, I just did the next thing of the list.

0:01:35.500,0:01:39.603
So I thought I'd tell you everything I wished I'd known starting out.

0:01:39.603,0:01:42.706
And a few things that, looking back on it, I suppose that I did know.

0:01:42.706,0:01:49.265
And that I would also give you the best piece of advice I'd ever got, which I completely failed to follow.

0:01:50.281,0:01:58.072
First of all, when you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you're doing.

0:01:59.396,0:02:01.038
This is great!

0:02:01.592,0:02:04.227
People who know what they're doing know the rules.

0:02:04.227,0:02:07.199
And they know what is possible and what is impossible.

0:02:07.199,0:02:10.395
You do not. And you should not.

0:02:10.395,0:02:13.936
The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people

0:02:13.936,0:02:19.144
who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them.

0:02:19.144,0:02:20.688
And you can!

0:02:20.688,0:02:23.870
If you don't know what's impossible, it's easier to do.

0:02:23.870,0:02:26.943
And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules

0:02:26.943,0:02:29.846
to stop anyone doing that particular thing again.

0:02:31.061,0:02:39.287
(applauds)

0:02:39.287,0:02:40.453
Secondly,

0:02:40.453,0:02:42.701
if you have an idea of what you want to make,

0:02:42.701,0:02:47.709
what you were put here to do... then just go and do that!

0:02:47.709,0:02:50.313
And that's much harder than it sounds.

0:02:50.313,0:02:53.505
And sometimes in the end so much easier than you might imagine.

0:02:53.505,0:02:55.671
Because normally there are things you have to do

0:02:55.671,0:02:58.707
before you can get to the place you want to be.

0:02:58.707,0:03:03.581
I wanted to write comics, and novels, and stories, and films, so I became a journalist.

0:03:03.581,0:03:06.582
Because journalists are allowed to ask questions

0:03:06.582,0:03:09.043
or simple go and find out how the world works

0:03:09.043,0:03:13.791
and besides, to do those things I needed to write. And to write well.

0:03:13.791,0:03:15.993
And I was being paid to learn how to write.

0:03:15.993,0:03:22.402
Economically, crisply, sometimes under adverse conditions, on deadline.

0:03:23.233,0:03:25.460
Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do

0:03:25.460,0:03:28.878
will be clear cut. And sometimes it will be almost impossible

0:03:28.878,0:03:31.125
to decide whether or not you're doing the correct thing

0:03:31.125,0:03:33.707
because you'll have to balance your goals and hopes

0:03:33.707,0:03:37.580
with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work,

0:03:37.580,0:03:40.141
settling for what you can get.

0:03:40.818,0:03:46.894
Something what worked for me was imagining where I wanted to be.

0:03:47.525,0:03:52.709
Which was an author, primarily in fiction, making good books, making good comics,

0:03:52.709,0:03:57.767
making good drama and supporting myself through my words,

0:03:57.767,0:04:03.287
imagining that was a mountain, a distant mountain - my goal.

0:04:05.241,0:04:10.914
And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain, I would be all right.

0:04:10.914,0:04:13.209
And when I truly was not sure what to do,

0:04:13.209,0:04:14.486
I could stop, and think about

0:04:14.486,0:04:16.486
whether it was taking me towards

0:04:16.486,0:04:19.095
or away from the mountain.

0:04:19.388,0:04:22.927
I said no to editorial jobs on magazines,

0:04:22.927,0:04:25.247
proper jobs that would've paid proper money,

0:04:25.970,0:04:28.868
because I knew that, attractive though they were,

0:04:28.868,0:04:30.633
for me they would've been

0:04:30.633,0:04:32.302
walking away from the mountain.

0:04:32.302,0:04:35.209
And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them

0:04:35.391,0:04:39.801
because they still would've been closer to the mountain than I was at that time.

0:04:40.916,0:04:43.280
I learnt to write by writing.

0:04:43.280,0:04:46.120
I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure,

0:04:46.618,0:04:51.730
and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work.

0:04:53.868,0:04:59.284
Thirdly, when you start out, you have to deal with problems of failure.

0:04:59.563,0:05:04.152
You need to be thickskinned to learn that not every project will survive.

0:05:04.611,0:05:07.028
A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes

0:05:07.028,0:05:10.504
like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island,

0:05:10.645,0:05:13.381
and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles

0:05:13.621,0:05:16.714
and open it and read it, and put something in the bottle

0:05:16.861,0:05:19.153
that will wash its way back to you:

0:05:19.153,0:05:23.537
Appreciation or a commission, or money, or love.

0:05:23.688,0:05:26.083
And you have to accept that you may put out hundreds of things

0:05:26.180,0:05:30.160
for every bottle that winds up coming back.

0:05:30.730,0:05:33.982
The problems of failure are the problems of discouragement,

0:05:34.131,0:05:35.528
of hopelessness, of hunger.

0:05:35.728,0:05:37.946
You want everything to happen and you want it now,

0:05:38.112,0:05:39.587
and things go wrong!

0:05:39.972,0:05:43.652
My first book, a piece of journalism I had done only for the money,

0:05:43.843,0:05:48.292
and which had already bought me an electric typewriter from the advance,

0:05:48.525,0:05:50.943
should've been a bestseller

0:05:50.943,0:05:52.607
it should've paid me a lot of money

0:05:52.607,0:05:55.284
if the publisher hadn't gone into involuntary liquidation

0:05:55.422,0:05:59.779
between the first print run selling out and the second print run never happening,

0:06:00.225,0:06:02.797
and before any royalties could be paid.

0:06:02.797,0:06:04.506
It would've done

0:06:04.506,0:06:06.320
And I shrugged.

0:06:06.320,0:06:08.184
And I still had my electric typewriter.

0:06:08.307,0:06:10.170
And enough money to pay the rent for a couple of months.

0:06:10.237,0:06:12.556
And I decided that I'do my best in the future

0:06:12.638,0:06:16.247
not to write books just for the money.

0:06:16.422,0:06:19.052
If you didn't get money, than you didn't have anything.

0:06:19.215,0:06:22.024
And if I did work I was proud of, and I didn't get the money,

0:06:22.220,0:06:24.401
at least I have the work.

0:06:25.340,0:06:26.484
Every now and then

0:06:26.484,0:06:27.970
I forget that rule

0:06:28.109,0:06:32.101
and whatever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me.

0:06:32.225,0:06:36.422
I don't know if that's an issue for anybody but me,

0:06:36.422,0:06:40.330
but it's true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money

0:06:40.330,0:06:44.360
was ever worth it, except as bitter experience.

0:06:45.221,0:06:47.764
Usually I didn't wind up getting the money, either.

0:06:50.456,0:06:52.471
The things I did because I was excited,

0:06:52.501,0:06:54.157
and wanted to see them exist in reality

0:06:54.157,0:06:56.718
have never let me down, and I've never regretted the time

0:06:56.825,0:06:59.020
I spent on any of them.

0:06:59.805,0:07:02.043
The problems of failure are hard.

0:07:02.043,0:07:05.777
The problems of success can be harder,

0:07:05.777,0:07:07.994
because nobody warns you about them.

0:07:08.548,0:07:10.282
The first problem of any kind of even

0:07:10.282,0:07:12.407
limited success is the unshakable conviction

0:07:12.407,0:07:14.121
that you're getting away with something,

0:07:14.121,0:07:18.327
and that any moment now they will discover you.

0:07:23.909,0:07:25.325
It's Impostor Syndrome,

0:07:25.325,0:07:28.751
something my wife Amanda christened the Fraud Police.

0:07:30.203,0:07:33.408
In my case, I was convinced there would be a knock on the door,

0:07:33.420,0:07:35.108
and the man with a clipboard

0:07:35.938,0:07:37.489
(I don't know why he carried a clipboard,

0:07:37.489,0:07:40.657
but in my head he always had a clipboard)

0:07:40.657,0:07:43.784
would be there, to tell me it was all over,

0:07:43.784,0:07:45.184
and they caught up with me,

0:07:45.184,0:07:47.520
and now I would have to go and get read job,

0:07:48.596,0:07:51.915
one that didn't consists of making things up and writing them down,

0:07:52.157,0:07:54.239
and reading books I wanted to read.

0:07:54.239,0:07:58.283
And then I would go away quietly and get the kind of job

0:07:58.462,0:08:04.682
I would have to get up early in the morning for and wear a tie and not making things up anymore.

0:08:05.945,0:08:08.629
The problems of success... they're real.

0:08:08.629,0:08:12.041
And with luck, you'll experience them.

0:08:12.611,0:08:14.960
The point when you stop saying Yes to everything,

0:08:14.991,0:08:16.702
because now the bottles you throw in the ocean

0:08:16.779,0:08:18.883
are all coming back,

0:08:18.883,0:08:20.744
and you have to learn to say No.

0:08:22.496,0:08:23.900
I watched my peers,

0:08:23.930,0:08:24.772
and my friends,

0:08:24.849,0:08:25.643
and the ones who were older than me

0:08:25.643,0:08:28.053
and watch how miserable some of them were:

0:08:28.361,0:08:29.978
I'd listened to them telling me

0:08:29.978,0:08:32.167
that they couldn't envisage a world where they did

0:08:32.167,0:08:34.965
what they had always wanted to do any more,

0:08:34.965,0:08:37.158
because now they had to earn a certain amount

0:08:37.158,0:08:39.246
every month just to keep where they were.

0:08:39.306,0:08:42.493
They couldn't go and do the things that mattered, and that they had really wanted to do...

0:08:42.493,0:08:47.907
and that seemed as big a tragedy as any problem of failure.

0:08:49.214,0:08:50.506
And after that,

0:08:50.521,0:08:55.178
the biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing

0:08:55.178,0:08:58.141
the thing that you do, because you're successful!

0:08:59.158,0:09:01.717
There was a day when I looked up and realised that

0:09:01.760,0:09:03.862
I had become someone who professionally

0:09:03.862,0:09:08.661
replied to email... and who wrote as a hobby.

0:09:10.000,0:09:12.199
I started answering fewer emails,

0:09:12.199,0:09:16.281
and was relieved to find I was writing much more.

0:09:17.143,0:09:20.739
Fourthly, I hope you'll make mistakes.

0:09:21.647,0:09:25.465
If you're making mistakes, it means you're out there doing something.

0:09:25.618,0:09:28.260
And the mistakes in themselves can be very useful,

0:09:28.260,0:09:32.954
I once misspelled Caroline, in a letter,

0:09:33.369,0:09:35.795
transposing the A and the O,

0:09:35.795,0:09:37.696
and I thought, "Coraline

0:09:37.696,0:09:39.763
looks almost like a real name".

0:09:41.640,0:09:43.716
Remember, whatever the discipline you're in,

0:09:43.716,0:09:47.469
whether you're a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist,

0:09:47.469,0:09:50.831
a writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer,

0:09:50.831,0:09:53.213
whatever you do, you have one thing that's unique...

0:09:53.213,0:09:56.255
You have the ability to make art.

0:09:58.317,0:09:59.952
And for me,

0:09:59.952,0:10:01.513
and for so many of the people I've known

0:10:01.513,0:10:03.288
that's been a lifesaver.

0:10:03.288,0:10:04.457
The ultimate lifesaver.

0:10:04.457,0:10:05.862
It gets you through good times

0:10:05.862,0:10:08.465
and it gets you through the other ones.

0:10:09.296,0:10:11.982
Sometimes life is hard, things go wrong

0:10:11.982,0:10:16.485
in life, and in love, and in business, and in friendship

0:10:16.485,0:10:18.674
and in health, and in all the other ways

0:10:18.674,0:10:20.318
that life can go wrong.

0:10:20.949,0:10:22.782
And when things get tough,

0:10:22.782,0:10:24.746
this is what you should do.

0:10:24.746,0:10:28.091
Make. Good. Art.

0:10:29.076,0:10:30.785
I'm serious!

0:10:30.785,0:10:35.496
Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art.

0:10:38.096,0:10:42.075
Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor?

0:10:42.675,0:10:44.471
Make good art.

0:10:45.933,0:10:48.268
IRC on your trail? Make good art.

0:10:48.268,0:10:52.209
Cat... Cat exploded? Make good art.

0:10:53.916,0:10:58.492
Someone on the internet thinks what you're doing is stupid or evil or it's all been done before?

0:10:58.492,0:11:00.795
Make good art.

0:11:01.549,0:11:03.516
Probably things will work out somehow,

0:11:03.516,0:11:05.853
and eventually time will take the sting away...

0:11:05.853,0:11:08.359
That doesn't even matter.

0:11:08.359,0:11:10.523
Do what only you can do best.

0:11:10.523,0:11:13.482
Make. Good Art.

0:11:14.575,0:11:16.657
Make it on the bad days...

0:11:16.657,0:11:19.744
Make in on the good days, too.

0:11:19.744,0:11:22.720
And fifthly, while you're at it, make your art.

0:11:22.720,0:11:24.614
Do the stuff that only you can do.

0:11:24.614,0:11:28.351
The urge, starting out, is to copy, and it's not a bad thing.

0:11:28.351,0:11:33.024
Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people.

0:11:34.340,0:11:37.826
But the one thing that you have that nobody else has...

0:11:38.219,0:11:39.390
Is you.

0:11:40.221,0:11:42.886
Your voice. Your mind. Your story.

0:11:43.393,0:11:45.164
Your vision.

0:11:45.164,0:11:47.831
So write, and draw, and build, and play, and dance,

0:11:47.831,0:11:50.211
and live as only you can.

0:11:51.704,0:11:55.887
The moment that you feel that, just possibly,

0:11:56.702,0:11:58.908
you're walking down the street naked,

0:11:58.908,0:12:01.528
exposing too much of your heart and your mind

0:12:01.528,0:12:02.970
and what exists on the inside,

0:12:02.970,0:12:04.387
showing too much of yourself.

0:12:04.387,0:12:09.044
That's the moment you maybe started to get it right.

0:12:10.970,0:12:13.402
The things I've done that worked the best

0:12:13.402,0:12:15.303
were the things I was the least certain about,

0:12:15.303,0:12:17.510
the stories where I was sure they would either work,

0:12:17.510,0:12:21.965
or, more likely, be the kind of embarrassing failure people would gather together

0:12:21.980,0:12:24.257
and discuss until the end of time.

0:12:25.350,0:12:26.866
They always had that in common:

0:12:26.866,0:12:31.007
looking back at them, people explain why they were inevitable successes.

0:12:31.056,0:12:34.283
While I was doing them, I had no idea.

0:12:34.283,0:12:35.893
I still don't.

0:12:35.893,0:12:39.691
And where would be the fun in making something you knew was going to work?

0:12:39.731,0:12:43.449
And sometimes the things I did really didn't work.

0:12:43.449,0:12:46.172
There are stories of mine that've never been reprinted.

0:12:46.205,0:12:48.444
Some even never left the house.

0:12:49.374,0:12:52.012
But I learned as much from that as I did from things that worked.

0:12:53.561,0:12:58.528
Okay. Sixthly, I will pass on some secret freelancer knowledge.

0:12:59.475,0:13:02.112
Secret knowledge is always good!

0:13:02.112,0:13:05.598
And it's useful for anyone who ever plans to create art for other people,

0:13:05.644,0:13:08.227
to enter a freelance world of any kind.

0:13:08.227,0:13:10.144
I learned it in comics.

0:13:10.144,0:13:12.925
But it applies to other fields too, and it's this.

0:13:13.756,0:13:18.656
People get hired because, somehow, they get hired.

0:13:20.056,0:13:22.441
In my case I did something which these days

0:13:22.441,0:13:24.502
would be easy to check, and would get me into

0:13:24.502,0:13:26.727
a lot of trouble, and when I started out in those

0:13:26.727,0:13:30.025
pre-internet days, seemed like a sensible career strategy.

0:13:30.431,0:13:33.619
When I was asked by editors who I'd worked for,

0:13:33.619,0:13:34.747
I lied.

0:13:38.071,0:13:40.202
I listed a handful of magazines that sounded likely,

0:13:40.202,0:13:43.767
and I sounded confident, and I got jobs.

0:13:44.152,0:13:52.702
(applauds)

0:13:52.702,0:13:56.230
I then made it a point of honour to have written

0:13:56.230,0:13:57.900
something for each of the magazines

0:13:57.900,0:14:00.048
I'd listed to get that first job.

0:14:01.202,0:14:02.484
So that I hadn't actually lied,

0:14:02.484,0:14:04.507
I'd just been chronologically challenged.

0:14:04.507,0:14:07.243
(laugh)

0:14:07.243,0:14:10.481
And you get work however you get work.

0:14:10.481,0:14:14.518
But people keep working, in a freelance world,

0:14:14.518,0:14:17.589
(and more and more of today's world is freelance)

0:14:17.589,0:14:19.955
because their work is good,

0:14:19.955,0:14:22.360
and because they are easy to get along with,

0:14:22.360,0:14:24.827
and because they deliver the work on time.

0:14:24.827,0:14:28.231
And you don't even need all three.

0:14:29.092,0:14:31.564
Two out of three is FINE.

0:14:33.503,0:14:36.293
People will tolerate how unpleasant you are

0:14:36.293,0:14:39.528
if your work is good and you deliver it on time!

0:14:39.774,0:14:42.799
(laugh)

0:14:42.799,0:14:44.682
People will forgive the lateness of your work

0:14:44.682,0:14:47.019
if it's good, and if they like you!

0:14:47.019,0:14:49.716
And you don't have to be as good as everyone else

0:14:49.716,0:14:53.824
if you're on time and it's always a pleasure to hear from you.

0:14:53.824,0:15:02.383
(laugh, applauds)

0:15:05.490,0:15:07.830
So when I agreed to give this address,

0:15:07.830,0:15:09.541
I thought: What the best piece of advice

0:15:09.572,0:15:11.767
I was ever given?

0:15:11.767,0:15:14.725
And I realised that it was actually piece of advice

0:15:14.725,0:15:17.295
that I had failed to follow.

0:15:17.295,0:15:19.673
And it came from Stephen King,

0:15:19.673,0:15:22.123
20 years ago at the height of the success,

0:15:22.231,0:15:24.995
the initial success of Sandman,

0:15:24.995,0:15:27.376
the comic I was writing. I was...

0:15:27.392,0:15:28.679
Oh thank you!

0:15:28.679,0:15:30.496
I was writing a comic that people loved...

0:15:30.496,0:15:32.630
and were taking seriously

0:15:32.630,0:15:34.632
and Stephen King had liked Sandman

0:15:34.632,0:15:36.802
and my novel with Terry Pratchett, "Good omens",

0:15:36.802,0:15:38.705
and he saw the madness that was going on,

0:15:38.705,0:15:40.974
the long signing lines, all of that stuff

0:15:40.974,0:15:43.642
and his advice to me was this:

0:15:43.642,0:15:48.432
He said, "This is really great. You should enjoy it".

0:15:49.508,0:15:51.013
And I didn't.

0:15:51.706,0:15:54.318
Best advice I'd ever got that I ignored.

0:15:54.318,0:15:57.155
Instead I worried about it.

0:15:57.155,0:16:00.456
I worried about the next deadline, the next idea,

0:16:00.456,0:16:02.495
the next story...

0:16:02.495,0:16:04.861
There wasn't a moment for the next 14 or 15 years

0:16:04.861,0:16:06.732
that I wasn't writing something in my head,

0:16:06.732,0:16:08.881
or wondering about it. And I didn't stop

0:16:08.881,0:16:10.547
and look around and go,

0:16:10.547,0:16:14.572
This is really fun!

0:16:14.572,0:16:16.508
I wish I'd enjoyed it more.

0:16:16.508,0:16:17.842
It's been an amazing ride.

0:16:17.842,0:16:19.580
But there were parts of a ride I missed,

0:16:19.580,0:16:21.880
because I was too worried about things going wrong,

0:16:21.880,0:16:25.734
about what came next, to enjoy the bit that I was on.

0:16:25.950,0:16:28.671
That was the hardest lesson for me, I think.

0:16:28.671,0:16:31.489
To let go and enjoy the ride.

0:16:31.489,0:16:36.126
Because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places.

0:16:36.661,0:16:39.505
And here, on this platform, today for me

0:16:39.505,0:16:42.199
is one of those places.

0:16:42.199,0:16:46.204
And I am enjoying myself immensely.

0:16:46.204,0:16:57.382
(applauds)

0:16:57.382,0:16:59.417
I'd actually put this in brackets, just in case I wasn't...

0:16:59.417,0:17:00.952
I wouldn't say.

0:17:00.952,0:17:05.087
(laugh)

0:17:05.087,0:17:09.796
To all today's graduates, I wish you luck!

0:17:09.796,0:17:11.863
Luck is useful. Often you will discover

0:17:11.863,0:17:13.398
that the harder you work,

0:17:13.398,0:17:14.532
and the more wisely do you work,

0:17:14.532,0:17:16.733
the luckier you will get.

0:17:17.303,0:17:18.754
But there's luck.

0:17:18.754,0:17:20.974
And it helps.

0:17:20.974,0:17:24.254
We're in a transitional world right now,

0:17:24.254,0:17:26.544
if you're in any kind of artistic field,

0:17:26.544,0:17:29.280
because the nature of distribution is changing.

0:17:29.280,0:17:31.910
The models by which creators got their work

0:17:31.910,0:17:34.619
out into the world, and got to keep the roof over their heads

0:17:34.619,0:17:37.456
and buy sandwiches while they did that,

0:17:37.456,0:17:39.522
they're all changing.

0:17:39.522,0:17:41.686
I've talked to people at top of the food chain

0:17:41.686,0:17:44.330
in publishing, in bookselling, in music

0:17:44.330,0:17:45.298
and in all those areas,

0:17:45.298,0:17:48.332
and no one knows what the landscape will look like

0:17:48.332,0:17:52.238
two years from now, let alone a decade away.

0:17:52.238,0:17:54.241
The distribution channels that people had built

0:17:54.241,0:17:57.576
over the last century or so, are in flux

0:17:57.576,0:17:59.612
for print, for visual artists, for musicians,

0:17:59.612,0:18:03.081
for creative people of all kinds.

0:18:03.081,0:18:05.388
Which is, on the one hand, intimidating,

0:18:05.388,0:18:09.140
and on the other... immensely liberating.

0:18:09.140,0:18:12.122
The rules, the assumptions, the now-we are supposed-to's

0:18:12.122,0:18:16.649
of how you get your work seen, or what you do then,

0:18:16.649,0:18:18.171
they're breaking down!

0:18:18.171,0:18:22.124
The gatekeepers are leaving their gates.

0:18:22.124,0:18:24.667
You can be as creative as you need to be

0:18:24.760,0:18:27.166
to get your work seen.

0:18:27.166,0:18:30.508
YouTube, and the web (and whatever comes after YouTube and the web)

0:18:30.531,0:18:34.342
can give you more people watching than television ever did.

0:18:35.295,0:18:39.333
The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are.

0:18:40.639,0:18:42.899
So make up your own rules!

0:18:43.530,0:18:45.742
Someone asked me recently how to do something she thought

0:18:45.742,0:18:47.142
was going to be difficult.

0:18:47.142,0:18:49.700
In this case, recording the audiobook.

0:18:49.977,0:18:54.097
And I suggested she pretend that she was someone who could do it.

0:18:56.185,0:18:59.751
Not pretend to do it... but pretend she was someone who could.

0:19:00.459,0:19:03.934
She put up a notice to this effect on the studio wall...

0:19:03.934,0:19:05.985
and she said it helped.

0:19:06.478,0:19:10.308
So be wise! Because the world needs more wisdom.

0:19:10.308,0:19:15.380
And if you cannot be wise... pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.

0:19:15.641,0:19:17.982
(laugh)

0:19:18.274,0:19:28.925
(applauds)

0:19:28.925,0:19:32.430
And now go... and make interesting mistakes.

0:19:32.430,0:19:37.001
Make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes.

0:19:37.001,0:19:41.472
Break rules, leave the world more interesting for your being here.

0:19:41.472,0:19:44.479
Make. Good. Art.

0:19:44.479,0:19:45.160
Thank you.

0:19:45.160,0:19:50.714
(applauds)