My two favorite books about writing and creativity are On Writing by Stephen King and Born Standing Up by Steve Martin. In particular, Martin had some advice that hit hard and stuck with me: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
Yes.
When I was young I thought I really wanted to draw superhero comics (a career that holds no appeal to me today). I kept looking at artists I considered the worst working for DC and Marvel and thinking, “I’m better than them, they should hire me instead!”
That attitude is common among aspiring creators, but in retrospect its ignorance and arrogance is embarrassing. First, I can see now that I really wasn’t better than those artists. Second, those artists had 30-year track records producing professional-grade work on deadline, while I had none. Third, I was an idiot to set my sights so low.
Don’t aim to be better than the worst. Aim to be better than the best.
But that’s so daunting! You could never be as good as Jack Kirby or Neal Adams or Charles Schulz (or Stephen King or Steve Martin)! Impossible!
But you can work hard and do your best and fall short because you’re right, you’ll never be better than the best. But maybe you’ve made yourself better than 90 percent of your competition instead of 1 percent of it. Maybe now you’re so good they can’t ignore you, and even if they can’t hire you today, I guarantee they will remember you later.
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