This is an excellent book. I haven’t quite finished it yet, but I can already tell you that it’s excellent, because it goes into why it is that artists have to put—or creative people I should say, in general—not just artists as in painting, but creative people need to put their work out there and do marketing and find patrons in order to survive and get paid for their work.
And it’s a wonderful book in so many ways. Not only does it cite examples of artists and creatives who have done this throughout the ages, including Michelangelo—from Michelangelo to an astronaut who decided to turn to painting the images he saw on the moon—but it goes into why it’s important to value yourself as a creative person and your work and that, while maybe you don’t write or paint or do any creative thing only for the money, money is required in order for your creative work to survive, to get out there. So he gives advice on ways that you can let people know about your work and real life examples of how it has worked for other people.
So this book for me was good for two main reasons. First, because it emphasized the importance of marketing and how to do so in ways that are creative rather than pushy. Secondly, because it’s an inspirational reading in the sense that anybody who has doubted themselves as a creative person, if you read this book, it will give you more incentive to do what you want to do, because it just has that effect. It had that effect on me, it motivated me to do more of what I wanted to do, and I guess really there’s a third reason.
It encourages you to think about doing more than just what you know. It encourages you to learn new things. Learning new things has been what my life has been all about, and this has been especially true during the past couple of years. I have learned so much over the past couple of years that the knowledge sometimes overwhelms me. And, in a world where we get so much information all at once, it’s nice to have a book like this that helps you sort of focus on the information that is important to you as a creator—that will help your long-term career. So, my feeling is this is a book that all creative people should read. Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins. And that’s it for me. I’ll talk to you next week. Thanks! 🙂