I Think of the 'Make Good Art' Speech Daily

I get asked very frequently, particularly at the beginning of the year, how I manage to do what I do. Write books, be a freelance journalist, maintain optimism about it, whatever. Somehow, I've cobbled together a life in all this, and I feel very, very lucky.

First and foremost, I believe so passionately in the gravity and importance of what I do (absorb, translate, and convey beauty in a way that makes others feel connected and significant) and in my own talent for it. I do feel the call to creative work, as described by Mary Oliver, and this is my methodology.

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time. — Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays”

That, and my toxic trait being that I genuinely believe I can make anything happen. I will not stop.

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I'm not a huge speech or Ted Talk person, but those I love tend to stick with me. I think frequently about my holy trinity of sorts: Ira Glass's "The Gap," George Saunders's "Congratulations, by the way," and Neil Gaiman's "Make Good Art." And Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" and Alan Watts's "What Would You Do if Money Was No Object?" are in there too, of course.

I am, of course, very lucky to have the material reality of being able to pursue creative work—still with a significant amount of financial risk and terror on my end, as well as the existential fear that I could be deluding myself—as I'm not directly supporting a family, spouse, or dependents. But it is possible, and it does require a lot of mental recalibrating whenever you catch yourself sinking into despair. Lightly, my darling, lightly.

Fear Inoculation and the Argument for Doing Things That Scare You

Recently, I've been reading a lot about fear inoculation and resilience, and realized that a huge reason why I've actually been able to do what I want is because I am actually afraid of very little. Beyond the usuals like snakes (fine with them but they definitely give me shivers if they're right beside me), natural disasters (I was not a great version of myself in October when I thought my family could be vulnerable), and the fear of people I love dying or suffering—I have maybe three genuine addressable fears.

And out of these, there are maybe three I can actually control or address, two of which are situational enough that I have no need to forcibly encounter them. Kind of a wild realization.

So what does that leave me with, fear-wise, beyond the existential and relational, the broad enough fears that they're fundamentally human? I should jump out of a plane, I guess? Just do things that are tough but not necessarily scary to me? I wrote down watch horror movies and read horror books as a shortcut but that feels like cheating. I've tackled far too many previous fears already.

Anyway, I did realize that 99% of the time, I do things (within my control) that scare me frequently enough that very little within my control at the moment actually does. So I'm a step ahead in terms of hardship inoculation, but do wish I could do more about the situational ones to just suddenly be immune to everything ever.

The Gist of Each Speech I Just Cited:

• Your taste outpaces your ability.
• You're one of many.
• Biggest failures are failures of kindness.
• Do what you want to and are passionate about, because eventually you will build expertise and be paid for it.
• & this one—some considerations while making art.

Ew, Y'all — Did You Hear About Neil Gaiman?

It recently broke that Neil Gaiman has sexually assaulted many women. On my to-read list is a book about the complexity of enjoying art by creatives who have committed atrocities.

I feel strongly that our fiction should not have to avoid unethical characters or decisions within it (or else what's the damn point of art as challenge and exploration?) I also think frequently about how much of an author's work reflects them, because it feels like a slippery slope and significant hindsight bias to say, "Oh, yeah, I could have guessed based on [fiction.]" Let's maybe not go there? But that's hypocritical of me because I personally get that vibe from American Psycho.

I do personally think your money supports your morals so I do my best to funnel my spending and attention towards artists who clearly walk in the light based on my personal moral code. Everyone has their line, and financial benefit is mine (so I do consider the same when considering artists who are living vs. dead, and who their estate benefits.) But then again, attention is our most valuable and limited resource, so I would of course prefer to only encounter and enjoy works by people I want to support.

Regardless of their "value," there are plenty of worthy writers circling around the same thoughts or ideas we crave from someone's creations, even if the execution looks different; we'd like to think that everything we do is totally novel, but many of us can also ultimately generate the same plot ideas. Instead, context and voice can also lend a work its gravitas—and in this case, the context now sucks.

Fundamentally, I do feel like I treat a motivational speech given by someone who's so significantly violated other people as empty advice. Normally, I'd link to buy the book yourself, but I obviously won't. It's an imperfect system to discuss those artists at all, and I'm still walking that line. Also, I'm sure some of my audience includes Gaiman fans who haven't heard about this, so maybe that's the value in discussing his speech at all.

Anyway, Make Good Art as a speech has always helped me when I'm beating myself up over perfectionism or analyzing the creative vs. business sides of art. I argue this all the time, but one of the reasons I'm able to pursue creative work is because I never lose sight of the very difficult realities of making it suitable for a living. You do have to be practical about it, and I have lines and limits drawn for myself in being passionate but also being smart about setting myself up well.

My Recent Artistic Struggles—a Portrait

My big fear, creatively, is that I flop and embarrass myself, and that I at some point have to retreat to live with family to pick up the pieces and pay any bills I might accumulate at the tail end of said failure. Which is very doable, and probably wouldn't take all that long. And I do love being with family. So that's not too bad, and again, I am very lucky that that's my low.

In that sense, my fear there may be wasted time and opportunity, that I miss out on a window of time I wanted somewhere else, or that I feel stuck and immobile after already giving up so much of my 20s to write a fucking book four separate times. Such is the cost of pursuit. I still anticipate being deeply sad if I fail and having a lot to work through, but I've already done a ridiculous amount too so need to give myself some credit for all the milestones I've shattered that a lot of people avoid because of fear. (That sounds incredibly obnoxious. Sorry.)

But all in all, I'll always be working towards something, and in this case, my biggest possible consequence is really not that terrible at all (which again, means that I am extremely lucky.) I am smart enough to keep my overhead low, to keep my opportunities broad, etc,. and I know that I am always capable of changing myself and what I want. So I shouldn't stress so much.

I did start seeing a therapist early last year, and when picking up some pieces from the chaos that was November, he asked me what I was most externally stressed about and what the consequences of each thing were.

So I told him and explained (total fear inoculation moment here: I'm being vulnerable and sharing something that I worry makes me look like I'm not as capable as I want to be) that I'm behind on getting my car up to date (consequence: fines, and feeling bad about myself for procrastinating something so basic all year long), that I didn't earn a lot in December and that feels like it means I'm failing at my goals (consequence: largely money), that I gave up some article opportunities because I wasn't going to be able to turn them in and I was afraid that would sour my relationships with editors (consequence: my reputation could suffer), that I feel terrible being slow on my book turn-in and having spent so long on it already (consequence: the discomfort of still being in the process, plus concerns about sunk cost and windows of opportunity) and worry about not having fresh eyes (consequence: not being perfectly confident about my final read will make being on submission harder, but I think that ship has sailed.) And he said that none of those really sounded all that impactful. I can deal with any of them and still be pretty happy, and I have not wrecked my life by having problems like these. And he was right. (Another thing I worked through this year: I used to nearly always carry this constant sense of guilt. I have a ridiculous amount of guilt for someone who is not Catholic. In this case, I'd both make myself feel like shit for not living up to my perfectionism but also beat myself up for being self-pitying when I know how lucky I am and how many people have actual, life-changing problems. Mine are nothing in comparison.)

And when I was transparent about the few externals I could control, people were really nice, regardless of whether or not that affects me down the line.

A 2024 win is that I really did become better about separating my sense of self from my failures, which has done a lot for my well-being. I can hold myself to extremely, extremely high standards without holding myself to impossible ones.

Make Good Art was a keynote at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 17, 2012. I'm copying it directly here as it's widely available online, but am annotating it with highlights for what resonates most with me.

'Make Good Art' — The Speech Itself

I never really expected to find myself giving advice to people graduating from an establishment of higher education. I never graduated from any such establishment. I never even started at one. I escaped from school as soon as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I’d become the writer I wanted to be was stifling.

I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid for it, or they didn’t, and often they commissioned me to write something else for them.

Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education that those of my friends and family, who attended Universities, were cured of long ago.

Looking back, I’ve had a remarkable ride. I’m not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan, and I never did. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was 15 of everything I wanted to do: to write an adult novel, a children’s book, a comic, a movie, record an audiobook, write an episode of Doctor Who… and so on. I didn’t have a career. I just did the next thing on the list.

So I thought I’d tell you everything I wish I’d known starting out, and a few things that, looking back on it, I suppose that I did know. And that I would also give you the best piece of advice I’d ever got, which I completely failed to follow.

First of all: When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing.

This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can.

If you don’t know it’s impossible, it’s easier to do. And because nobody’s done it before, they haven’t made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.

Secondly: if you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that.

And that’s much harder than it sounds and, sometimes in the end, so much easier than you might imagine. Because normally, there are things you have to do before you can get to the place you want to be. I wanted to write comics and novels and stories and films, so I became a journalist, because journalists are allowed to ask questions, and to simply go and find out how the world works, and besides, to do those things I needed to write and to write well, and I was being paid to learn how to write economically, crisply, sometimes under adverse conditions, and on time.

Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear cut, and sometimes it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you are doing the correct thing, because you’ll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get.

Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be – an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics and supporting myself through my words – was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.

And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time.

I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work.

Thirdly, When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive. A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back.

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. My first book – a piece of journalism I had done for the money, and which had already bought me an electric typewriter from the advance – should have been a bestseller. It should have paid me a lot of money. If the publisher hadn’t gone into involuntary liquidation between the first print run selling out and the second printing, and before any royalties could be paid, it would have done.

And I shrugged, and I still had my electric typewriter and enough money to pay the rent for a couple of months, and I decided that I would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn’t get the money, then you didn’t have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn’t get the money, at least I’d have the work.

Every now and again, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me. I don’t know that it’s an issue for anybody but me, but it’s true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn’t wind up getting the money, either. The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I’ve never regretted the time I spent on any of them.

The problems of failure are hard.

The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them.

The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you. It’s Imposter Syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened the Fraud Police.

In my case, I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard (I don’t know why he carried a clipboard, in my head, but he did) would be there, to tell me it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job, one that didn’t consist of making things up and writing them down, and reading books I wanted to read. And then I would go away quietly and get the kind of job where you don’t have to make things up any more.

The problems of success. They’re real, and with luck you’ll experience them. The point where you stop saying yes to everything, because now the bottles you threw in the ocean are all coming back, and have to learn to say no.

I watched my peers, and my friends, and the ones who were older than me and watch how miserable some of them were: I’d listen to them telling me that they couldn’t envisage a world where they did what they had always wanted to do any more, because now they had to earn a certain amount every month just to keep where they were. They couldn’t go and do the things that mattered, and that they had really wanted to do; and that seemed as a big a tragedy as any problem of failure.

And after that, the biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful. There was a day when I looked up and realised that I had become someone who professionally replied to email, and who wrote as a hobby. I started answering fewer emails, and was relieved to find I was writing much more.

Fourthly, I hope you’ll make mistakes.

If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something. And the mistakes in themselves can be useful. I once misspelled Caroline, in a letter, transposing the A and the O, and I thought, “Coraline looks like a real name…”

And remember that whatever discipline you are in, whether you are a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a designer, whatever you do you have one thing that’s unique. You have the ability to make art.

And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that’s been a lifesaver. The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones.

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.

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.

And fifthly, while you are at it, make your art. Do the stuff that only you can do.

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.

The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.

The things I’ve done that worked the best were the things I was the least certain about, the stories where I was sure they would either work, or more likely be the kinds of embarrassing failures people would gather together and talk about until the end of time. They always had that in common: looking back at them, people explain why they were inevitable successes. While I was doing them, I had no idea.

I still don’t. And where would be the fun in making something you knew was going to work?

And sometimes the things I did really didn’t work. There are stories of mine that have never been reprinted. Some of them never even left the house. But I learned as much from them as I did from the things that worked.

Sixthly. I will pass on some secret freelancer knowledge. Secret knowledge is always good.

And it is useful for anyone who ever plans to create art for other people, to enter a freelance world of any kind. I learned it in comics, but it applies to other fields too. And it’s this:

People get hired because, somehow, they get hired. In my case I did something which these days would be easy to check, and would get me into trouble, and when I started out, in those pre-internet days, seemed like a sensible career strategy: when I was asked by editors who I’d worked for, I lied. I listed a handful of magazines that sounded likely, and I sounded confident, and I got jobs. I then made it a point of honour to have written something for each of the magazines I’d listed to get that first job, so that I hadn’t actually lied, I’d just been chronologically challenged… You get work however you get work.

People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today’s world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time.

And you don’t even need all three. Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They’ll forgive the lateness of the work if it’s good, and if they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as the others if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.

When I agreed to give this address, I started trying to think what the best advice I’d been given over the years was.

And it came from Stephen King twenty years ago, at the height of the success of Sandman. I was writing a comic that people loved and were taking seriously. King had liked Sandman and my novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, and he saw the madness, the long signing lines, all that, and his advice was this:

“This is really great. You should enjoy it.”

And I didn’t. Best advice I got that I ignored. Instead I worried about it. I worried about the next deadline, the next idea, the next story. There wasn’t a moment for the next fourteen or fifteen years that I wasn’t writing something in my head, or wondering about it. And I didn’t stop and look around and go, this is really fun. I wish I’d enjoyed it more. It’s been an amazing ride. But there were parts of the ride I missed, because I was too worried about things going wrong, about what came next, to enjoy the bit I was on.

That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: to let go and enjoy the ride, because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places.

And here, on this platform, today, is one of those places. (I am enjoying myself immensely.)

To all today’s graduates: I wish you luck. Luck is useful. Often you will discover that the harder you work, and the more wisely you work, the luckier you get. But there is luck, and it helps.

We’re in a transitional world right now, if you’re in any kind of artistic field, because the nature of distribution is changing, the models by which creators got their work out into the world, and got to keep a roof over their heads and buy sandwiches while they did that, are all changing. I’ve talked to people at the top of the food chain in publishing, in bookselling, in all those areas, and nobody knows what the landscape will look like two years from now, let alone a decade away. The distribution channels that people had built over the last century or so are in flux for print, for visual artists, for musicians, for creative people of all kinds.

Which is, on the one hand, intimidating, and on the other, immensely liberating. The rules, the assumptions, the now-we’re supposed to’s of how you get your work seen, and what you do then, are breaking down. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. You can be as creative as you need to be to get your work seen. YouTube and the web (and whatever comes after YouTube and the web) can give you more people watching than television ever did. The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are.

So make up your own rules.

Someone asked me recently how to do something she thought was going to be difficult, in this case recording an audio book, and I suggested she pretend that she was someone who could do it. Not pretend to do it, but pretend she was someone who could. She put up a notice to this effect on the studio wall, and she said it helped.

So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.

And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.

Further Analysis & Recs Based on the Lines

When you start out in a creative career, you have no idea what you're doing, which means you don't know the rules.

In a book I read recently about creative breakthroughs, Adam Alter praises the same concept, using examples for why consultants and diversified rooms are so helpful in getting people unstuck—not only for their fresh POV, but for the momentum and the way it shakes people up. It's a net-positive on both a group- and individual-level.

So I became a journalist, because journalists are allowed to ask questions.

This is not consciously a reasoning of mine for being a journalist, but I do appreciate my career as a journalist, and it is true that it's more allowed. I got such giddy glee from press trips where it was socially acceptable to bring a notebook to the dinner table. And I do think my driving force behind what I do is blatant curiosity, or I'd lose my ability to write. Plus, writing daily for assignments—even if it's on a topic that feels trivial to me—builds my muscle, rhythm, and discipline in a way that helps me so much creatively. Because endurance is so often the hard part, and the stamina to keep going is what so many writers lose.

I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work.

I largely go with this too, but I diverge from Gaiman on this one—because I've learned that anything you love will ultimately feel like work when you're pushing yourself to your limits in it and aiming to translate it into a beneficial, concrete reality. That's just economics. And for the most part, I do what I love, but that's also why writing for the blog always feels fun but writing for a magazine (or even on my own book) might feel like a slog—because as soon as you attach a "have to" to something, it ceases to be as appealing. That's dopamine, baby. The thrill of the chase.

And Neil Gaiman goes on to talk about how he decided he wasn't going to do things just for the money, but also, we're in a time of inflation and hardship. The goalpost keeps moving, so it's totally fine to just do things for the money and it doesn't make you less creative!

'Hierarchy of needs' feels relevant here. / Credit: Wikipedia.

The problems of success are real.

I have this problem in freelance journalism. In freelance journalism, you have to send out a lot of pitches and calls for work, and all you're armed with is your reputation. Adam Alter wrote in Anatomy of a Breakthrough about how we have such survivorship bias when it comes to startup founders and creatives and all them; we don't realize that 99% of the time, they're getting NOs to start. Failure is a part of the deal, but they just eventually become invisible. So when you start getting a better position, you do start getting YESes more often, which can be hard.

Scheduling is tricky. "Firing a client" is always a terrible experience. And I do think that freelancing contributes a lot to the guilt I frequently felt for years, like not only do I not entirely know what I'm doing but also I'm not doing it well enough. When you're so used to hungering for a YES, it does feel bad—and take a new skill—to be able to say NO, especially if it's not getting you exactly where you want.

And fifthly, while you are at it, make your art. Do the stuff that only you can do.

Voice is key. You can always get better on a craft level, but you have to share your voice or else nothing will happen and the impact won't be there. (My Grace advice on this: read widely and read often. Experience as much as possible. Be curious, etc,. All that sappiness. Because the only thing that will make you a better and more distinctive writer is living a very distinctive reality in which you notice a lot.)

The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.

“The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always. — Arthur Miller”

I want to be a huge bestseller and for everyone I know to read and love my book, but that also makes it a self-conscious process sometimes. The writing (exorcism) of it is easy, but the publication of it is another matter entirely. Because even though I consider myself and my main character very different, that I've written opinions and thoughts within the book that sometimes don't reflect my own, that it's inherently not autobiographical and limited by the very constraints of language meaning that someone, somewhere, will inevitably misunderstand my point—I do know that some people I know—including my own mama—will read Mountain Sounds and think, "Oh, that's Grace."

Of course, that's excellent for the good and terrible for the bad or embarrassing. (I absolutely loathe the thought of anyone reading any sort of romantic encounter or feeling I write, because that feels private.)

This is really good. You should enjoy it.

I'm currently rereading On Writing by Stephen King, and one thing I deeply appreciate about him is that he is constantly praising and elevating new writers. He is always the first to say something positive, to recognize the impact that his endorsement carries, and he epitomizes a belief I have that if you think something good about someone, you should share it. Because it costs you nothing and only ever makes their day. You never know who might need it too.

Another issue I've encountered in book writing specifically is that (although I love the process of writing a book), I sometimes get so stressed about it that I forget to enjoy the highs—or worry about the possibility of a Pyrrhic victory.

“Don't borrow trouble from the future.”

I think everyone struggles with this, in shutting off the hunger and shifting towards gratitude for what you do have at each step (hedonistic treadmill in action), even though it takes so much to get to that endpoint that you're afraid any pause, any slowness, any lack of wanting, will somehow jeopardize your chances at the long shot.

But yeah, I've had to consciously learn how to enjoy and appreciate the process more, and to not wish away my time. That's a goal of mine when I go on submission and see what happens too.

Often you will discover that the harder you work, and the more wisely you work, the luckier you get.

This is scientifically proven, by the way. In the way we define "luck," at least.

[The rules are changing.] Which is, on the one hand, intimidating, and on the other, immensely liberating.

Yes. This was written in 2012, before the advent of any of the current breakthroughs and shifts we're currently seeing—COVID, AI, trad publishing vs. indie (at least on the writer side), algorithms, oversaturation and fatigue, a connection crisis, and what I see as the conscious devaluation of art in the business sphere. So many factors to navigate. But that can be terrible or good depending on your framework.

Finally, out of order, I want to share the single bit of this speech that is the reason I reference it constantly.

All the rest is so helpful and good, don't get me wrong, but this 2-out-of-3 rule is the Bible for me in freelancing when I feel like I've somehow missed the mark, let an editor down, or whatever. Other speeches repeat or get to the rest of his ideas, but this is the most specific.

It's a good rule of thumb that releases me from some of the pressures of perfectionism while still holding myself to an extremely high standard. Because I want to be the top to work with, at all times. But life happens too.

And one aspect of freelancing: you absolutely never know what any other writers are doing or like, what their relationship is like with editors, etc,. So you might be struggling with something and not realize that multiple people have done the same—or that you clock in as having more of these values than you think. For example, it took me forever to realize that I submit extremely clean drafts, which is why publications tend to work with me repeatedly, but now that's a way I pitch myself to work with new people or editors. I never would have known, because I have no other writers or references to compare myself with; you're seeing final copy and articles, which each editor puts a lot of work into! You also don't know if it was turned in late, if they were secretly a bitch to work with, and all the other factors. So do the best you can, but also be nicer to yourself.

I was bad with deadlines in fall 2024. I was so burnt out, and a lot went wrong. But I also always prided myself on being good at deadlines, and used to pitch myself as having extremely quick turnarounds. (Commerce news & deals—the team I used to work on—demanded that. I could basically write on demand.) I'm an extremely disciplined person, but my output slowed, and my estimates were so off even while building myself extra time.

“Hofstadter's Law (self-referential): It always takes longer than you expect, even accounting for Hofstadter's Law.”

For a while, I definitely felt like I was failing at my job (although I've objectively had plenty of wins this year), and this Make Good Art advice was a fantastic framework to keep me feeling like I was still a good enough journalist to keep going. In 2025, I will heal that, but aiming for at least 2 of 3 keeps my head above water when I feel like I'm drowning.

If I was going to turn in something late, it'd be damned good work. If I was rushing to get something in on time, I could sacrifice a little perfectionism. Not to be a brat, but I'd like to think I'm always a pleasure to work with because I'm a kind, considerate person (but I can't speak for myself on that one.)

I'd add another note too though. If you do let go of these at any point, just apologize and be honest. Those clients may choose to work with you again; they may not. That's part of the process; your commissions list is constantly changing, and also, many editors are always moving around publications. Especially right now, media has so many layoffs and moments of confusion or change. You might get a commission from a new title because someone you've written for moved there; you might stop working with someone you know well because they found another writer who can satisfy their needs or be more reliable in a way you're not in a given moment. It's not personal.

Be open to being corrected to! I once had an editor email me that a piece they published was too similar to something I'd published elsewhere, and I handled it by apologizing, explaining my reasoning behind how they were different (in hindsight, too subtly, but I think intention does goes a long way), and—although some people will say you should take the money anyway for your labor—I decided to offer not to invoice for it. It was a mistake, but I wanted to take accountability for how it came off.

So, in general, showing intention but also taking accountability & apologizing (based on recognizing that intention doesn't mean your actions don't have consequence.) Which is probably a good life skill, too.

It was a good convo, we kept the rate the same, they understood, and they commissioned me again. That was fully a blunder of mine from not coming from a traditional journalism background, but that's still probably the biggest mistake I've made in freelance journalism thus far, excepting my deadline slow-down, nervousness pitching, and the fact that I'm generally really late to actually invoice, which is incredibly dumb of me.

(Maybe it's not great for me to be transparent about this on the Internet, because many editors do follow me and my blog. I promise I'm a fantastic worker and just had a rough patch re: timing estimates. I'm also good at many, many things.)

All in all, I've just found that being transparent goes a long way. People understand the human aspects of work and productivity, and it's not personal if they need to pivot. They shouldn't have to accommodate you if you might ask for it, but you can often find a solution that preserves a relationship just by going into it all with willingness to earn and some humility, and not immediately going on the defensive when something goes wrong. I do think part of confidence is accepting when you're wrong or ignorant, allowing yourself to change your mind, separating out intention from what happens, etc,.

Especially in freelancing, you start to learn what works and what doesn't, but there's always a bunch of novelty being thrown your way (which is partly why I like it so much.) I am always getting better at the rhythms of my job. I've also started learning which tasks I'm good at, which I hate, and forcing systems that makes those preferences work for me rather than constantly beating myself up for not loving every single second of what I do.

I think I'm a good writer and a good worker, but making art or any kind of creative work is a discipline that comes with its own unique challenges, and Neil Gaiman does a good job articulating them both from an inner, motivational standard and balancing it with some of the more practical realities.

Frankly, I know so many people who want to be writers but won't make it happen for themselves or give up when the wins don't happen right away. Again, it takes a whole lot of luck, privilege, and persistence to make it happen for yourself, and you can only control how much you can control, so I'm not judging the choice not to do it or pretending like I've made it to where I am completely independently. Certain aspects of my personality can make it easier and harder to do, and I absolutely have my (temporary) moments of loathing my choices. And I'm still figuring out a lot, and have my limits on what is an acceptable risk versus when (if ever) I would need to call it quits and take on something else if the circumstances demanded it. I love what I do enough that I would find a way to keep it up for my sense of self even if I (doubtful) eventually decided all this (for some reason) wasn't meant to be my job forever.

But there are some factors you can optimize in the pursuit of creative work to make it easier for yourself to execute and actually go for as a career, because making it happen for myself is something I'm very proud of. Whatever happens!