WEBVTT 00:00:01.378 --> 00:00:02.882 Thank you 00:00:02.882 --> 00:00:04.858 [laughter] 00:00:04.858 --> 00:00:09.801 I never really expected to find myself giving advice 00:00:09.801 --> 00:00:15.719 to people graduating from an establishment of higher education. 00:00:15.719 --> 00:00:20.034 I never graduated from any such establishment. 00:00:20.034 --> 00:00:22.389 I never even started at one. 00:00:22.389 --> 00:00:25.156 I escaped from school as soon as I could, 00:00:25.156 --> 00:00:28.493 when the prospect of 4 more years of enforced learning, 00:00:28.493 --> 00:00:33.783 before I could become the writer who I wanted to be, seemed stifling. 00:00:33.783 --> 00:00:35.697 I got out into the world, I wrote 00:00:35.697 --> 00:00:37.781 and I became a better writer the more I wrote. 00:00:37.781 --> 00:00:38.836 And I wrote some more 00:00:38.836 --> 00:00:40.556 and nobody ever seemed to mind 00:00:40.556 --> 00:00:43.346 that I was making it all up as I went along. 00:00:43.346 --> 00:00:45.326 They just read what I wrote and they paid me for it, 00:00:45.326 --> 00:00:46.519 or they didn't. 00:00:46.519 --> 00:00:47.940 [laughter] 00:00:47.940 --> 00:00:49.476 And often they commissioned me 00:00:49.476 --> 00:00:53.128 to write something else for them, which has left me 00:00:53.128 --> 00:00:57.620 with a healhty respect and fondness for higher education, 00:00:57.620 --> 00:01:00.712 that those of my friends and family who attended universities 00:01:00.712 --> 00:01:03.361 were cured of long ago. 00:01:03.361 --> 00:01:06.985 Looking back I've had a remarkable ride. 00:01:06.985 --> 00:01:09.315 I'm not sure I can call it a career, 00:01:09.315 --> 00:01:14.122 because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan, 00:01:14.122 --> 00:01:16.092 and I never did. 00:01:16.092 --> 00:01:19.613 The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was about 15, 00:01:19.613 --> 00:01:21.550 of everything I wanted to do. 00:01:21.550 --> 00:01:24.033 I wanted to write an adult novel, 00:01:24.033 --> 00:01:25.130 a children's book, 00:01:25.130 --> 00:01:26.430 a comic, a movie, 00:01:26.430 --> 00:01:27.971 record an audiobook, 00:01:27.971 --> 00:01:31.610 write an episode of Dr. Who, and so on. 00:01:31.610 --> 00:01:33.179 I didn't have a career, 00:01:33.179 --> 00:01:35.096 I just did the next thing on the list. 00:01:35.096 --> 00:01:39.722 So I thought I'd tell you everything I wished I'd known starting out 00:01:39.722 --> 00:01:41.450 and a few things that looking back on it 00:01:41.450 --> 00:01:43.083 I suppose I did know. 00:01:43.083 --> 00:01:46.654 And I'll also give you the best piece of advice I'd ever got 00:01:46.654 --> 00:01:49.694 which I completely failed to follow. 00:01:49.971 --> 00:01:52.187 First of all, 00:01:52.187 --> 00:01:55.425 when you start out on a career in the arts, 00:01:55.425 --> 00:01:58.919 you have no idea what you're doing. 00:01:58.919 --> 00:02:01.925 This is great. 00:02:01.925 --> 00:02:04.534 People who know what they are doing know the rules 00:02:04.534 --> 00:02:07.362 and they know what is possible and what is impossible. 00:02:07.362 --> 00:02:10.247 You do not, and you should not. 00:02:10.247 --> 00:02:13.617 The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made 00:02:13.617 --> 00:02:17.085 by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible 00:02:17.085 --> 00:02:19.322 by going beyond them. 00:02:19.322 --> 00:02:21.057 And you can. 00:02:21.057 --> 00:02:22.455 If you don't know it's impossible, 00:02:22.455 --> 00:02:24.330 it's easier to do. 00:02:24.330 --> 00:02:26.155 And because nobody's done it before, 00:02:26.155 --> 00:02:27.497 they haven't made up rules 00:02:27.497 --> 00:02:31.925 to stop anyone doing that particular thing again. 00:02:31.925 --> 00:02:38.923 [applause] 00:02:39.338 --> 00:02:42.802 Secondly, if you have an idea of what you want to make, 00:02:42.802 --> 00:02:44.516 what you were put here to do, 00:02:44.516 --> 00:02:47.518 they just go and do that. 00:02:47.518 --> 00:02:50.409 And that's much harder than it's sounds 00:02:50.409 --> 00:02:53.454 and sometimes in the end so much easier than you might imagine. 00:02:53.454 --> 00:02:55.919 Because normally there are things you have to do 00:02:55.919 --> 00:02:58.623 before you can get to the place you want to be. 00:02:58.623 --> 00:03:01.579 I wanted to write comics and novels and stories and films, 00:03:01.579 --> 00:03:03.753 so I became a journalist, 00:03:03.753 --> 00:03:06.697 because journalists are allowed to ask questions 00:03:06.697 --> 00:03:09.070 and to simply go and find out how the world works. 00:03:09.070 --> 00:03:12.148 And, besides, to do those things I needed to write 00:03:12.148 --> 00:03:13.934 and to write well. 00:03:13.934 --> 00:03:16.065 And I was being paid to learn how to write 00:03:16.065 --> 00:03:20.285 economically, crisply, sometimes under adverse conditions 00:03:20.285 --> 00:03:22.653 and on deadline. 00:03:22.653 --> 00:03:26.929 Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear-cut. 00:03:26.929 --> 00:03:29.017 And sometimes it would be almost impossible 00:03:29.017 --> 00:03:31.375 to decide whether or not you're doing the correct thing, 00:03:31.375 --> 00:03:34.013 because you'll have to balance your goals and hopes 00:03:34.013 --> 00:03:36.257 with feeding yourself 00:03:36.257 --> 00:03:37.891 paying debts, finding work 00:03:37.891 --> 00:03:40.326 settling for what you can get. 00:03:40.326 --> 00:03:42.841 Something that worked for me 00:03:42.841 --> 00:03:46.743 was imagining where I wanted to be 00:03:46.743 --> 00:03:50.208 - which was an author, primarily of fiction, 00:03:50.208 --> 00:03:53.627 making good books, making good comics, 00:03:53.627 --> 00:03:55.556 making good drama 00:03:55.556 --> 00:03:57.895 and supporting myself through my words - 00:03:57.895 --> 00:04:00.709 imagining that was a mountain, 00:04:00.709 --> 00:04:04.849 a distant mountain, my goal. 00:04:04.849 --> 00:04:08.674 And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain 00:04:08.674 --> 00:04:10.574 I'd be alright. 00:04:10.574 --> 00:04:13.491 And when I truly was not sure what to do, 00:04:13.491 --> 00:04:14.881 I could stop and think about 00:04:14.881 --> 00:04:18.040 whether it was taking me towards or away from it 00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:19.992 - the mountain. 00:04:19.992 --> 00:04:23.262 I said no to editorial jobs on magazines 00:04:23.262 --> 00:04:25.774 - proper jobs that would have paid proper money - 00:04:25.774 --> 00:04:29.427 bcause I kew that, attractive though they were, for me 00:04:29.427 --> 00:04:32.391 they would have been walking away from the mountain. 00:04:32.391 --> 00:04:33.691 And if those job offers had come earlier 00:04:33.691 --> 00:04:35.886 I might have taken them, 00:04:35.886 --> 00:04:38.296 because they still would have been closer to the mountain 00:04:38.296 --> 00:04:41.091 than I was at that time. 00:04:41.091 --> 00:04:43.059 I learned to write by writing. 00:04:43.059 --> 00:04:46.373 I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure 00:04:46.373 --> 00:04:49.074 and to stop when it felt like work, 00:04:49.074 --> 00:04:53.207 which meant that life did not feel like work. 00:04:53.207 --> 00:04:59.027 Thirdly, when you start out you have to deal with the problems of failure. 00:04:59.027 --> 00:05:01.428 You need to be thick skinned, 00:05:01.428 --> 00:05:04.497 to learn that not every project will survive. 00:05:04.497 --> 00:05:06.701 A freelance life, a life in the arts, 00:05:06.701 --> 00:05:10.166 is sometimes like putting messages in bottles on a desert island 00:05:10.166 --> 00:05:13.790 and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles 00:05:13.790 --> 00:05:15.242 and open it and read it 00:05:15.242 --> 00:05:18.776 and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you 00:05:18.776 --> 00:05:23.174 - appreciation or a commission or money or love. 00:05:23.174 --> 00:05:26.724 And you have to accept that you may put out hundreds of things 00:05:26.724 --> 00:05:30.350 for every bottle that winds up coming back. 00:05:30.350 --> 00:05:34.458 The problems of failure, the problems of discouragement, 00:05:34.458 --> 00:05:36.436 of hopelessness, of hunger. 00:05:36.436 --> 00:05:38.353 You want everything to happen, and you want it now 00:05:38.353 --> 00:05:40.303 and things go wrong. 00:05:40.303 --> 00:05:44.173 My first book, a piece of journalism I'd done only for the money 00:05:44.173 --> 00:05:46.908 and which had already bought me an electric typewriter 00:05:46.908 --> 00:05:50.770 from the advance, should have been a best seller. 00:05:50.770 --> 00:05:52.844 It should have paid me a lot of money, 00:05:52.844 --> 00:05:55.536 if the publisher hadn't gone into involuntary liquidation 00:05:55.536 --> 00:05:57.653 between the first print run selling out 00:05:57.653 --> 00:06:00.141 and the second print run never happening 00:06:00.141 --> 00:06:03.019 and before any royalties could be paid. 00:06:03.019 --> 00:06:04.337 It would have done. 00:06:04.337 --> 00:06:05.973 And I shrugged 00:06:05.973 --> 00:06:07.970 and I still had my electric typewriter 00:06:07.970 --> 00:06:10.288 and enough money to pay the rent for a couple of months. 00:06:10.288 --> 00:06:12.836 And I decided that I'd do my best in the future 00:06:12.836 --> 00:06:16.085 not to write books just for the money. 00:06:16.085 --> 00:06:18.639 If you didn't get the money then you didn't have anything. 00:06:18.639 --> 00:06:22.206 And if I did work I was proud of, and I didn't get the money, 00:06:22.206 --> 00:06:24.619 at least I'd have the work. 00:06:24.619 --> 00:06:26.543 Every now and then 00:06:26.543 --> 00:06:28.120 I forget that rule 00:06:28.120 --> 00:06:30.919 and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard 00:06:30.919 --> 00:06:33.155 and reminds me. 00:06:33.155 --> 00:06:36.086 I don't know that it's an issue for anybody but me 00:06:36.086 --> 00:06:38.271 but it's true that nothing I did 00:06:38.271 --> 00:06:40.271 where the only reason for doing it was the money 00:06:40.271 --> 00:06:42.418 was ever worth it, 00:06:42.418 --> 00:06:45.614 except as bitter experience. 00:06:45.614 --> 00:06:48.187 Usually I didn't wind up getting the money either. 00:06:48.187 --> 00:06:49.973 [laughter] 00:06:49.973 --> 00:06:52.438 The things I did because I was excited 00:06:52.438 --> 00:06:54.219 and wanted to see them exist in reality 00:06:54.219 --> 00:06:56.504 have never let me down, and I've never regretted 00:06:56.504 --> 00:06:59.743 the time I spent on any of them. 00:06:59.743 --> 00:07:01.876 The problems of faillure are hard. 00:07:01.876 --> 00:07:05.987 The problems of success can be harder, 00:07:05.987 --> 00:07:08.271 because nobody warns you about them. 00:07:08.271 --> 00:07:11.535 The first problem of any kind of even limited success 00:07:11.535 --> 00:07:14.454 is the unshakeable conviction that you're getting away with something 00:07:14.454 --> 00:07:17.621 and that any moment now they will discover you. 00:07:17.621 --> 00:07:22.275 [laughter] 00:07:22.275 --> 00:07:25.314 It's Imposter's Syndrome, 00:07:25.314 --> 00:07:29.336 something my wife Amanda christened "The Fraud Police". 00:07:29.336 --> 00:07:33.054 In my case I was convinced there would be a knock on the door 00:07:33.054 --> 00:07:35.330 and a man with a clipboard 00:07:35.330 --> 00:07:37.770 - I don't know why he had a clipboard 00:07:37.770 --> 00:07:40.954 but in my head he always had a clipboard - 00:07:40.954 --> 00:07:44.087 would be there to tell me it was all over 00:07:44.087 --> 00:07:45.421 and they caught up with me 00:07:45.421 --> 00:07:47.839 and now I would have to go and get a real job 00:07:47.839 --> 00:07:52.137 one that didn't consist of making things up and writing them down 00:07:52.137 --> 00:07:54.424 and reading books I wanted to read. 00:07:54.424 --> 00:07:56.103 And then I would go away quietly 00:07:56.103 --> 00:07:57.886 and get the kind of job 00:07:57.886 --> 00:08:00.412 I would have to get up early in the morning 00:08:00.412 --> 00:08:02.336 and wear a tie 00:08:02.336 --> 00:08:05.637 and not make things up anymore. 00:08:05.637 --> 00:08:08.754 The problems of success, they're real 00:08:08.754 --> 00:08:12.253 and with luck, you'll experience them. 00:08:12.253 --> 00:08:14.920 The point where you stop saying yes to everything 00:08:14.920 --> 00:08:18.121 because now the bottles you throw in the ocean are all coming back 00:08:18.121 --> 00:08:21.359 and you have to learn to say "no". 00:08:21.359 --> 00:08:25.820 I watched my peers and my friends and the ones who are older than me 00:08:25.820 --> 00:08:28.839 and I watched how miserable some of them were. 00:08:28.839 --> 00:08:31.287 I'd listen to them telling they couldn't envisage a world 00:08:31.287 --> 00:08:35.170 where they did what they've always wanted to do anymore, 00:08:35.170 --> 00:08:37.903 because now they had to earn a certain amount every month 00:08:37.903 --> 00:08:39.369 just to keep where they were. 00:08:39.369 --> 00:08:41.370 They couldn't go and do the things that mattered 00:08:41.370 --> 00:08:42.953 and that they had really wanted to do 00:08:42.953 --> 00:08:48.999 and that seemed as big a tragedy as any problem of failure. 00:08:48.999 --> 00:08:52.304 And after that, the biggest problem of success 00:08:52.304 --> 00:08:54.169 is that the world conspires 00:08:54.169 --> 00:08:56.903 to stop you doing the thing that you do 00:08:56.903 --> 00:08:58.324 because you're successful. 00:08:58.324 --> 00:09:01.985 There was a day when I looked up and realized 00:09:01.985 --> 00:09:04.173 that I had become someone 00:09:04.173 --> 00:09:07.004 who professionally replied to email 00:09:07.004 --> 00:09:09.586 and he wrote as a hobby. 00:09:09.586 --> 00:09:12.187 I started answering fewer emails 00:09:12.187 --> 00:09:16.379 and was relieved to find, I was writing much more. 00:09:16.810 --> 00:09:21.670 Forthly, I hope you'll make mistakes. 00:09:21.670 --> 00:09:25.890 If you make mistakes, it means you're out there doing something 00:09:25.890 --> 00:09:28.724 and the mistakes in themselves can be very useful. 00:09:28.724 --> 00:09:33.154 I once misspelled Caroline in a letter, 00:09:33.154 --> 00:09:35.839 transposing the A and the O, 00:09:35.839 --> 00:09:37.570 and I thought "Coraline 00:09:37.570 --> 00:09:40.587 looks almost like a real name". 00:09:40.587 --> 00:09:43.820 Remember, whatever discipline you're in, 00:09:43.820 --> 00:09:46.037 whether you're a musician of a photographer, 00:09:46.037 --> 00:09:47.603 a fine artist or a cartoonist, 00:09:47.603 --> 00:09:50.955 a writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer, 00:09:50.955 --> 00:09:53.722 whatever you do, you have one thing that's unique: 00:09:53.722 --> 00:09:57.324 you have the ability to make art. 00:09:57.324 --> 00:10:01.437 And for me, and for so many of the people I've known 00:10:01.437 --> 00:10:03.486 that's been a lifesaver. 00:10:03.486 --> 00:10:04.724 The ultimate lifesaver. 00:10:04.724 --> 00:10:06.443 It gets you though good times, and it gets you 00:10:06.443 --> 00:10:09.102 through the other ones. 00:10:09.102 --> 00:10:12.156 Sometimes life is hard, things go wrong 00:10:12.156 --> 00:10:16.170 in life, and in love, and in business and in friendship 00:10:16.170 --> 00:10:20.354 and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. 00:10:20.354 --> 00:10:24.790 And when things get though, this is what you should do. 00:10:24.790 --> 00:10:29.204 Make good art. 00:10:29.204 --> 00:10:30.639 I'm serious. 00:10:30.639 --> 00:10:31.957 [laughter] 00:10:31.957 --> 00:10:33.937 Husband runs off with a politician? 00:10:33.937 --> 00:10:36.090 Make good art. 00:10:36.090 --> 00:10:37.927 [laughter] 00:10:37.927 --> 00:10:42.180 Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor? 00:10:42.180 --> 00:10:44.887 Make good art. 00:10:44.887 --> 00:10:47.520 IRS on your trail? Make good art. 00:10:47.520 --> 00:10:53.939 Cat exploded? Make good art. 00:10:53.939 --> 00:10:56.550 Someone on the internet thinks what you're doing 00:10:56.550 --> 00:10:58.753 is stupid or evil or it's all been done before? 00:10:58.753 --> 00:11:01.608 Make good art. 00:11:01.608 --> 00:11:03.786 Probably things will work out somehow, 00:11:03.786 --> 00:11:05.970 eventually time will take the sting away 00:11:05.970 --> 00:11:08.436 and that doesn't even matter. 00:11:08.436 --> 00:11:10.786 Do what only you can do best. 00:11:10.786 --> 00:11:14.070 Make good art. 00:11:14.070 --> 00:11:16.469 Make it on the bad days. 00:11:16.469 --> 00:11:19.557 Make it on the good days too. 00:11:19.772 --> 00:11:21.486 And fifthly, while you're at it, 00:11:21.486 --> 00:11:23.020 make your art. 00:11:23.020 --> 00:11:24.953 Do the stuff that only you can do. 00:11:24.953 --> 00:11:26.987 The urge, starting out, is to copy 00:11:26.987 --> 00:11:28.554 and that is not a bad thing. 00:11:28.554 --> 00:11:30.206 Most of us only find our own voices 00:11:30.206 --> 00:11:32.670 after we've sounded like a lot of other people. 00:11:32.670 --> 00:11:34.219 [laughter] 00:11:34.219 --> 00:11:37.804 But one thing that you have, that nobody else has 00:11:37.804 --> 00:11:45.069 is you, your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. 00:11:45.069 --> 00:11:47.554 So write and draw and build and play 00:11:47.554 --> 00:11:51.254 and dance and live as only you can. 00:11:51.254 --> 00:11:56.409 The moment that you feel that just possibly 00:11:56.409 --> 00:11:58.890 you're walking down the street naked 00:11:58.890 --> 00:12:01.787 exposing too much of your heart and your mind 00:12:01.787 --> 00:12:04.654 and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself, 00:12:04.654 --> 00:12:10.671 that's the moment you may be starting to get it right. 00:12:10.671 --> 00:12:12.687 The things I've done that work the best 00:12:12.687 --> 00:12:15.154 were the things I was the least certain about. 00:12:15.154 --> 00:12:16.787 The stories where I was sure they would either work 00:12:16.787 --> 00:12:20.636 or, more likely, be the kind of embarrassing failures 00:12:20.636 --> 00:12:25.006 that people would gather together and discuss until the end of time. 00:12:25.006 --> 00:12:27.987 They always had that in common: looking back at them 00:12:27.987 --> 00:12:31.210 people explain why they were inevitable successes 00:12:31.210 --> 00:12:34.120 and when I was doing them I had no idea. 00:12:34.120 --> 00:12:35.637 I still don't. 00:12:35.637 --> 00:12:37.668 And where would be the fun in making something 00:12:37.668 --> 00:12:39.387 you knew was going to work? 00:12:39.387 --> 00:12:43.016 And sometimes the things I did really didn't work. 00:12:43.016 --> 00:12:45.854 There are stories of mine that have never been reprinted. 00:12:45.854 --> 00:12:48.920 Some of them have never even left the house. 00:12:48.920 --> 00:12:52.867 But I learned as much from them as I did from the things that worked. 00:12:53.052 --> 00:12:59.472 Ok, sixthly, I'm gonna pass on some secret freelancer knowledge. 00:12:59.472 --> 00:13:02.165 Secret knowledge is always good and it's useful 00:13:02.165 --> 00:13:05.853 for anyone who ever plans to create art for other people, 00:13:05.853 --> 00:13:08.337 to enter a freelance world of any kind. 00:13:08.337 --> 00:13:10.169 I learned it in comics 00:13:10.169 --> 00:13:13.070 but it applies to other fields too, and it's this. 00:13:13.070 --> 00:13:18.718 People get hired because, somehow, they get hired. 00:13:18.718 --> 00:13:20.453 [laughter] 00:13:20.453 --> 00:13:23.822 In my case, I did something which these days would be easy to check 00:13:23.822 --> 00:13:25.438 and would get me into a lot of trouble 00:13:25.438 --> 00:13:27.988 and when I started out in those pre-internet days 00:13:27.988 --> 00:13:30.409 seemed like a sensible career strategy. 00:13:30.409 --> 00:13:33.878 When I was asked by editors who I'd written for, 00:13:33.878 --> 00:13:35.238 I lied. 00:13:35.238 --> 00:13:37.535 [laughter] 00:13:37.535 --> 00:13:40.704 I listed a handful of magazines that sounded likely 00:13:40.704 --> 00:13:43.054 and I sounded confident and I got jobs. 00:13:43.054 --> 00:13:52.982 [cheering] 00:13:53.197 --> 00:13:56.089 I then made it a point of honour to have written 00:13:56.089 --> 00:13:58.470 something for each of the magazines I'd listed 00:13:58.470 --> 00:14:00.804 to get that first job. 00:14:00.804 --> 00:14:02.454 So that I hadn't actually lied, 00:14:02.454 --> 00:14:05.390 I had just been chronologically challenged. 00:14:05.390 --> 00:14:07.229 [laughter] 00:14:07.229 --> 00:14:10.287 But you get work however you get work. 00:14:10.287 --> 00:14:14.454 But people keep working, in a freelance world 00:14:14.454 --> 00:14:17.220 - and more and more of today's world is freelance - 00:14:17.220 --> 00:14:19.919 because the work is good 00:14:19.919 --> 00:14:22.079 and because they're easy to get along with 00:14:22.079 --> 00:14:24.956 and because they deliver the work on time. 00:14:24.956 --> 00:14:28.821 And you don't even need all three. 00:14:28.821 --> 00:14:31.753 Two out of three is fine. 00:14:31.753 --> 00:14:33.487 [laughter] 00:14:33.487 --> 00:14:36.510 People will tolerate how unpleasant you are 00:14:36.510 --> 00:14:39.386 if your work is good and you deliver it on time. 00:14:39.386 --> 00:14:41.346 [laughter] 00:14:41.346 --> 00:14:44.704 People will forgive the lateness of your work 00:14:44.704 --> 00:14:46.269 if it's good and they like you. 00:14:46.269 --> 00:14:47.225 [laughter] 00:14:47.225 --> 00:14:49.638 And you don't have to be as good as everyone else 00:14:49.638 --> 00:14:52.977 if you're on time and it's always a pleasure to hear from you. 00:14:52.977 --> 00:14:55.588 [laughter] 00:14:55.588 --> 00:15:04.645 [applause] 00:15:04.953 --> 00:15:07.768 So when I agreed to give this address 00:15:07.768 --> 00:15:10.833 I thought what is the best piece of advice I was ever given 00:15:10.833 --> 00:15:15.221 and I realized that it was actually a piece of advice 00:15:15.221 --> 00:15:17.506 that I had failed to follow 00:15:17.506 --> 00:15:19.416 and it came from Stephen King. 00:15:19.416 --> 00:15:22.048 It was 20 years ago, at the height of the success 00:15:22.048 --> 00:15:23.366 - the initial success - 00:15:23.366 --> 00:15:26.648 of Sandman, the comic I was writing. 00:15:26.648 --> 00:15:28.815 [applause] Oh thank you 00:15:28.815 --> 00:15:30.447 I was writing a comic people loved 00:15:30.447 --> 00:15:32.348 and they were taking it seriously 00:15:32.348 --> 00:15:34.428 and Stephen King liked Sandman 00:15:34.428 --> 00:15:36.814 and my novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, 00:15:36.814 --> 00:15:38.863 and he saw the madness that was going on 00:15:38.863 --> 00:15:41.069 - the long signing lines, all of that stuff - 00:15:41.069 --> 00:15:43.236 and his advice to me was this. 00:15:43.236 --> 00:15:45.514 He said "this is really great 00:15:45.514 --> 00:15:48.897 you should enjoy it". 00:15:48.897 --> 00:15:51.503 And I didn't. 00:15:51.503 --> 00:15:54.299 Best advice I ever got that I ignored. 00:15:54.299 --> 00:15:56.849 Instead, I worried about it. 00:15:56.849 --> 00:15:58.797 I worried about the next deadline, 00:15:58.797 --> 00:16:00.582 the next idea, 00:16:00.582 --> 00:16:02.547 the next story. 00:16:02.547 --> 00:16:05.116 There wasn't a moment for the next 14 or 15 years 00:16:05.116 --> 00:16:07.119 that I wasn't writing something in my head 00:16:07.119 --> 00:16:08.431 or wondering about it. 00:16:08.431 --> 00:16:10.999 And I didn't stop and look around and go: 00:16:10.999 --> 00:16:13.882 "this is really fun". 00:16:13.882 --> 00:16:16.470 I wish I'd enjoyed it more. 00:16:16.470 --> 00:16:18.104 It's been an amazing ride, 00:16:18.104 --> 00:16:19.682 but there were parts of the ride that I missed, 00:16:19.682 --> 00:16:22.333 because I was too worried about things going wrong, 00:16:22.333 --> 00:16:25.132 about what came next, to enjoy the bit that I was on. 00:16:25.132 --> 00:16:28.448 That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: 00:16:28.448 --> 00:16:31.231 to let go, and enjoy the ride. 00:16:31.231 --> 00:16:33.598 Because the ride takes you to some remarkable 00:16:33.598 --> 00:16:36.686 and unexpected places. 00:16:36.686 --> 00:16:39.683 And here, on this platform, today for me 00:16:39.683 --> 00:16:42.182 is one of those places 00:16:42.182 --> 00:16:45.896 and I am enjoying myself immensely. 00:16:45.896 --> 00:16:57.041 [applause] 00:16:57.333 --> 00:16:58.859 I'd actually put that in brackets. 00:16:58.859 --> 00:17:01.039 Just in case I wasn't, I wouldn't say it. 00:17:01.039 --> 00:17:04.871 [laughter] 00:17:05.055 --> 00:17:07.546 To all today's graduates: 00:17:07.546 --> 00:17:10.784 I wish you luck, luck is useful. 00:17:10.784 --> 00:17:13.287 Often you will discover that the harder you work 00:17:13.287 --> 00:17:15.098 and the more wisely that you work 00:17:15.098 --> 00:17:17.401 the luckier you will get. 00:17:17.401 --> 00:17:20.367 But there is luck, and it helps. 00:17:20.367 --> 00:17:23.515 We're in a transitional world right now 00:17:23.515 --> 00:17:26.682 if you're in any kind of artistic field, 00:17:26.682 --> 00:17:29.765 because the nature of distribution is changing. 00:17:29.765 --> 00:17:32.950 The models by which creators got their work out into the world 00:17:32.950 --> 00:17:34.969 and got to keep a roof over their head 00:17:34.969 --> 00:17:37.074 and buy sandwhiches while they did that 00:17:37.074 --> 00:17:39.150 they're all changing. 00:17:39.150 --> 00:17:41.517 I talked to people at the top of the food chain 00:17:41.517 --> 00:17:43.697 in publishing and bookselling, 00:17:43.697 --> 00:17:45.682 in music, in all those areas 00:17:45.682 --> 00:17:48.514 and no one knows what the landscape will look like 00:17:48.514 --> 00:17:52.132 two years from now, let alone a decade away. 00:17:52.132 --> 00:17:54.415 The distribution channels that people have built 00:17:54.415 --> 00:17:57.448 over the last century or so, are in flux 00:17:57.448 --> 00:17:59.581 for print, for visual artists, for musicians, 00:17:59.581 --> 00:18:03.247 for creative people of all kinds. 00:18:03.247 --> 00:18:05.248 Which is on the one hand intimidating 00:18:05.248 --> 00:18:09.516 and on the other, immensely liberating. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:09.516 --> 00:18:12.199 The rules, the assumptions, the now-we're-supposed-tos 00:18:12.199 --> 00:18:16.015 of how you get your work seen and what you do then, 00:18:16.015 --> 00:18:18.658 they're breaking down. 00:18:18.658 --> 00:18:22.530 The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. 00:18:22.530 --> 00:18:26.763 You can be as creative as you need to be, to get your work seen. 00:18:26.763 --> 00:18:30.613 YouTube and the Web and whatever comes after YouTube and the Web 00:18:30.613 --> 00:18:32.398 can give you more people watching 00:18:32.398 --> 00:18:34.847 than all television ever did. 00:18:34.847 --> 00:18:37.152 The old rules are crumbling 00:18:37.152 --> 00:18:40.086 and nobody knows what the new rules are. 00:18:40.086 --> 00:18:43.115 So make up your own rules. 00:18:43.115 --> 00:18:45.167 Someone asked me recently how to do 00:18:45.167 --> 00:18:47.170 something she thought was going to be difficult, 00:18:47.170 --> 00:18:49.449 in this case recording an audiobook. 00:18:49.449 --> 00:18:55.067 And I suggested she pretend that she was someone who could do it. 00:18:55.067 --> 00:18:56.214 [laughter] 00:18:56.214 --> 00:19:00.350 Not pretend to do it, but pretend she was someone who could. 00:19:00.350 --> 00:19:03.132 She put up a notice to this effect on the studio wall 00:19:03.132 --> 00:19:06.267 and she said it helped. 00:19:06.267 --> 00:19:09.664 So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom 00:19:09.664 --> 00:19:13.933 and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise 00:19:13.933 --> 00:19:16.861 and then just behave like they would. 00:19:16.861 --> 00:19:28.542 [applause] 00:19:28.850 --> 00:19:32.411 And now go, and make interesting mistakes, 00:19:32.411 --> 00:19:33.766 make amazing mistakes, 00:19:33.766 --> 00:19:37.148 make glorious and fantastic mistakes. 00:19:37.148 --> 00:19:38.411 Break rules. 00:19:38.411 --> 00:19:41.178 Leave the world more interesting for your being here. 00:19:41.178 --> 00:19:44.278 Make good art. 00:19:44.278 --> 00:19:45.780 Thank you. 00:19:45.780 --> 00:19:53.580 [applause]