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Thank you

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[laughter]

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I never really expected to find myself giving advice

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to people graduating from an establishment of higher education.

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I never graduated from any such establishment.

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I never even started at one.

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I escaped from school as soon as I could,

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when the prospect of 4 more years of enforced learning,

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before I could become the writer who I wanted to be, seemed stifling.

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I got out into the world, I wrote

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and I became a better writer the more I wrote.

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And I wrote some more

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and nobody ever seemed to mind

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that I was making it all up as I went along.

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They just read what I wrote and they paid me for it,

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or they didn't.

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[laughter]

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And often they commissioned me

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to write something else for them, which has left me

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with a healhty respect and fondness for higher education,

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that those of my friends and family who attended universities

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were cured of long ago.

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Looking back I've had a remarkable ride.

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I'm not sure I can call it a career,

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because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan,

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and I never did.

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The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was about 15,

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of everything I wanted to do.

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I wanted to write an adult novel,

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a children's book,

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a comic, a movie,

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record an audiobook,

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write an episode of Dr. Who, and so on.

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I didn't have a career,

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I just did the next thing on the list.

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So I thought I'd tell you everything I wished I'd known starting out

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and a few things that looking back on it

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I suppose I did know.

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And I'll also give you the best piece of advice I'd ever got

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which I completely failed to follow.

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First of all,

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when you start out on a career in the arts,

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you have no idea what you're doing.

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This is great.

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People who know what they are doing know the rules

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and they know what is possible and what is impossible.

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You do not, and you should not.

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The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made

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by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible

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by going beyond them.

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And you can.

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If you don't know it's impossible,

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it's easier to do.

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And because nobody's done it before,

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they haven't made up rules

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to stop anyone doing that particular thing again.

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[applause]

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Secondly, if you have an idea of what you want to make,

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what you were put here to do,

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they just go and do that.

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And that's much harder than it's sounds

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and sometimes in the end so much easier than you might imagine.

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Because normally there are things you have to do

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before you can get to the place you want to be.

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I wanted to write comics and novels and stories and films,

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so I became a journalist,

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because journalists are allowed to ask questions

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and to simply go and find out how the world works.

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And, besides, to do those things I needed to write

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and to write well.

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And I was being paid to learn how to write

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economically, crisply, sometimes under adverse conditions

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and on deadline.

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Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear-cut.

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And sometimes it would be almost impossible

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to decide whether or not you're doing the correct thing,

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because you'll have to balance your goals and hopes

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with feeding yourself

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paying debts, finding work

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settling for what you can get.

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Something that worked for me

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was imagining where I wanted to be

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- which was an author, primarily of fiction,

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making good books, making good comics,

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making good drama

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and supporting myself through my words -

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imagining that was a mountain,

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a distant mountain, my goal.

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And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain

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I'd be alright.

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And when I truly was not sure what to do,

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I could stop and think about

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whether it was taking me towards or away from it

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- the mountain.

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I said no to editorial jobs on magazines

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- proper jobs that would have paid proper money -

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bcause I kew that, attractive though they were, for me

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they would have been walking away from the mountain.

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And if those job offers had come earlier

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I might have taken them,

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because they still would have been closer to the mountain

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than I was at that time.

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I learned to write by writing.

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I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure

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and to stop when it felt like work,

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which meant that life did not feel like work.

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Thirdly, when you start out you have to deal with the problems of failure.

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You need to be thick skinned,

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to learn that not every project will survive.

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A freelance life, a life in the arts,

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is sometimes like putting messages in bottles on a desert island

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and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles

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and open it and read it

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and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you

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- appreciation or a commission or money or love.

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And you have to accept that you may put out hundreds of things

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for every bottle that winds up coming back.

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The problems of failure, the problems of discouragement,

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of hopelessness, of hunger.

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You want everything to happen, and you want it now

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and things go wrong.

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My first book, a piece of journalism I'd done only for the money

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and which had already bought me an electric typewriter

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from the advance, should have been a best seller.

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It should have paid me a lot of money,

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if the publisher hadn't gone into involuntary liquidation

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between the first print run selling out

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and the second print run never happening

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and before any royalties could be paid.

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It would have done.

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And I shrugged

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and I still had my electric typewriter

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and enough money to pay the rent for a couple of months.

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And I decided that I'd do my best in the future

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not to write books just for the money.

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If you didn't get the money then you didn't have anything.

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And if I did work I was proud of, and I didn't get the money,

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at least I'd have the work.

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Every now and then

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I forget that rule

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and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard

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and reminds me.

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I don't know that it's an issue for anybody but me

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but it's true that nothing I did

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where the only reason for doing it was the money

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was ever worth it,

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except as bitter experience.

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Usually I didn't wind up getting the money either.

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[laughter]

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The things I did because I was excited

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and wanted to see them exist in reality

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have never let me down, and I've never regretted

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the time I spent on any of them.

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The problems of faillure are hard.

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The problems of success can be harder,

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because nobody warns you about them.

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The first problem of any kind of even limited success

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is the unshakeable conviction that you're getting away with something

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and that any moment now they will discover you.

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[laughter]

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It's Imposter's Syndrome,

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something my wife Amanda christened "The Fraud Police".

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In my case I was convinced there would be a knock on the door

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and a man with a clipboard

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- I don't know why he had a clipboard

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but in my head he always had a clipboard -

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would be there to tell me it was all over

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and they caught up with me

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and now I would have to go and get a real job

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one that didn't consist of making things up and writing them down

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and reading books I wanted to read.

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And then I would go away quietly

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and get the kind of job

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I would have to get up early in the morning

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and wear a tie

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and not make things up anymore.

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The problems of success, they're real

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and with luck, you'll experience them.

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The point where you stop saying yes to everything

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because now the bottles you throw in the ocean are all coming back

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and you have to learn to say "no".

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I watched my peers and my friends and the ones who are older than me

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and I watched how miserable some of them were.

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I'd listen to them telling they couldn't envisage a world

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where they did what they've always wanted to do anymore,

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because now they had to earn a certain amount every month

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just to keep where they were.

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They couldn't go and do the things that mattered

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and that they had really wanted to do

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and that seemed as big a tragedy as any problem of failure.

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And after that, the biggest problem of success

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is that the world conspires

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to stop you doing the thing that you do

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because you're successful.

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There was a day when I looked up and realized

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that I had become someone

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who professionally replied to email

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and he wrote as a hobby.

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I started answering fewer emails

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and was relieved to find, I was writing much more.

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Forthly, I hope you'll make mistakes.

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If you make mistakes, it means you're out there doing something

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and the mistakes in themselves can be very useful.

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I once misspelled Caroline in a letter,

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transposing the A and the O,

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and I thought "Coraline

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looks almost like a real name".

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Remember, whatever discipline you're in,

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whether you're a musician of a photographer,

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a fine artist or a cartoonist,

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a writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer,

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whatever you do, you have one thing that's unique:

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you have the ability to make art.

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And for me, and for so many of the people I've known

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that's been a lifesaver.

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The ultimate lifesaver.

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It gets you though good times, and it gets you

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through the other ones.

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Sometimes life is hard, things go wrong

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in life, and in love, and in business and in friendship

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and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong.

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And when things get though, this is what you should do.

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Make good art.

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I'm serious.

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[laughter]

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Husband runs off with a politician?

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Make good art.

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[laughter]

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Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor?

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Make good art.

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IRS on your trail? Make good art.

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Cat exploded? Make good art.

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Someone on the internet thinks what you're doing

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is stupid or evil or it's all been done before?

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Make good art.

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Probably things will work out somehow,

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eventually time will take the sting away

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and that doesn't even matter.

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Do what only you can do best.

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Make good art.

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Make it on the bad days.

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Make it on the good days too.

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And fifthly, while you're at it,

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make your art.

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Do the stuff that only you can do.

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The urge, starting out, is to copy

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and that is not a bad thing.

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Most of us only find our own voices

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after we've sounded like a lot of other people.

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[laughter]

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But one thing that you have, that nobody else has

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is you, your voice, your mind, your story, your vision.

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So write and draw and build and play

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and dance and live as only you can.

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The moment that you feel that just possibly

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you're walking down the street naked

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exposing too much of your heart and your mind

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and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself,

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that's the moment you may be starting to get it right.

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The things I've done that work the best

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were the things I was the least certain about.

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The stories where I was sure they would either work

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or, more likely, be the kind of embarrassing failures

264
00:12:20,636 --> 00:12:25,006
that people would gather together and discuss until the end of time.

265
00:12:25,006 --> 00:12:27,987
They always had that in common: looking back at them

266
00:12:27,987 --> 00:12:31,210
people explain why they were inevitable successes

267
00:12:31,210 --> 00:12:34,120
and when I was doing them I had no idea.

268
00:12:34,120 --> 00:12:35,637
I still don't.

269
00:12:35,637 --> 00:12:37,668
And where would be the fun in making something

270
00:12:37,668 --> 00:12:39,387
you knew was going to work?

271
00:12:39,387 --> 00:12:43,016
And sometimes the things I did really didn't work.

272
00:12:43,016 --> 00:12:45,854
There are stories of mine that have never been reprinted.

273
00:12:45,854 --> 00:12:48,920
Some of them have never even left the house.

274
00:12:48,920 --> 00:12:52,867
But I learned as much from them as I did from the things that worked.

275
00:12:53,052 --> 00:12:59,472
Ok, sixthly, I'm gonna pass on some secret freelancer knowledge.

276
00:12:59,472 --> 00:13:02,165
Secret knowledge is always good and it's useful

277
00:13:02,165 --> 00:13:05,853
for anyone who ever plans to create art for other people,

278
00:13:05,853 --> 00:13:08,337
to enter a freelance world of any kind.

279
00:13:08,337 --> 00:13:10,169
I learned it in comics

280
00:13:10,169 --> 00:13:13,070
but it applies to other fields too, and it's this.

281
00:13:13,070 --> 00:13:18,718
People get hired because, somehow, they get hired.

282
00:13:18,718 --> 00:13:20,453
[laughter]

283
00:13:20,453 --> 00:13:23,822
In my case, I did something which these days would be easy to check

284
00:13:23,822 --> 00:13:25,438
and would get me into a lot of trouble

285
00:13:25,438 --> 00:13:27,988
and when I started out in those pre-internet days

286
00:13:27,988 --> 00:13:30,409
seemed like a sensible career strategy.

287
00:13:30,409 --> 00:13:33,878
When I was asked by editors who I'd written for,

288
00:13:33,878 --> 00:13:35,238
I lied.

289
00:13:35,238 --> 00:13:37,535
[laughter]

290
00:13:37,535 --> 00:13:40,704
I listed a handful of magazines that sounded likely

291
00:13:40,704 --> 00:13:43,054
and I sounded confident and I got jobs.

292
00:13:43,054 --> 00:13:52,982
[cheering]

293
00:13:53,197 --> 00:13:56,089
I then made it a point of honour to have written

294
00:13:56,089 --> 00:13:58,470
something for each of the magazines I'd listed

295
00:13:58,470 --> 00:14:00,804
to get that first job.

296
00:14:00,804 --> 00:14:02,454
So that I hadn't actually lied,

297
00:14:02,454 --> 00:14:05,390
I had just been chronologically challenged.

298
00:14:05,390 --> 00:14:07,229
[laughter]

299
00:14:07,229 --> 00:14:10,287
But you get work however you get work.

300
00:14:10,287 --> 00:14:14,454
But people keep working, in a freelance world

301
00:14:14,454 --> 00:14:17,220
- and more and more of today's world is freelance -

302
00:14:17,220 --> 00:14:19,919
because the work is good

303
00:14:19,919 --> 00:14:22,079
and because they're easy to get along with

304
00:14:22,079 --> 00:14:24,956
and because they deliver the work on time.

305
00:14:24,956 --> 00:14:28,821
And you don't even need all three.

306
00:14:28,821 --> 00:14:31,753
Two out of three is fine.

307
00:14:31,753 --> 00:14:33,487
[laughter]

308
00:14:33,487 --> 00:14:36,510
People will tolerate how unpleasant you are

309
00:14:36,510 --> 00:14:39,386
if your work is good and you deliver it on time.

310
00:14:39,386 --> 00:14:41,346
[laughter]

311
00:14:41,346 --> 00:14:44,704
People will forgive the lateness of your work

312
00:14:44,704 --> 00:14:46,269
if it's good and they like you.

313
00:14:46,269 --> 00:14:47,225
[laughter]

314
00:14:47,225 --> 00:14:49,638
And you don't have to be as good as everyone else

315
00:14:49,638 --> 00:14:52,977
if you're on time and it's always a pleasure to hear from you.

316
00:14:52,977 --> 00:14:55,588
[laughter]

317
00:14:55,588 --> 00:15:04,645
[applause]

318
00:15:04,953 --> 00:15:07,768
So when I agreed to give this address

319
00:15:07,768 --> 00:15:10,833
I thought what is the best piece of advice I was ever given

320
00:15:10,833 --> 00:15:15,221
and I realized that it was actually a piece of advice

321
00:15:15,221 --> 00:15:17,506
that I had failed to follow

322
00:15:17,506 --> 00:15:19,416
and it came from Stephen King.

323
00:15:19,416 --> 00:15:22,048
It was 20 years ago, at the height of the success

324
00:15:22,048 --> 00:15:23,366
- the initial success -

325
00:15:23,366 --> 00:15:26,648
of Sandman, the comic I was writing.

326
00:15:26,648 --> 00:15:28,815
[applause] Oh thank you

327
00:15:28,815 --> 00:15:30,447
I was writing a comic people loved

328
00:15:30,447 --> 00:15:32,348
and they were taking it seriously

329
00:15:32,348 --> 00:15:34,428
and Stephen King liked Sandman

330
00:15:34,428 --> 00:15:36,814
and my novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens,

331
00:15:36,814 --> 00:15:38,863
and he saw the madness that was going on

332
00:15:38,863 --> 00:15:41,069
- the long signing lines, all of that stuff -

333
00:15:41,069 --> 00:15:43,236
and his advice to me was this.

334
00:15:43,236 --> 00:15:45,514
He said "this is really great

335
00:15:45,514 --> 00:15:48,897
you should enjoy it".

336
00:15:48,897 --> 00:15:51,503
And I didn't.

337
00:15:51,503 --> 00:15:54,299
Best advice I ever got that I ignored.

338
00:15:54,299 --> 00:15:56,849
Instead, I worried about it.

339
00:15:56,849 --> 00:15:58,797
I worried about the next deadline,

340
00:15:58,797 --> 00:16:00,582
the next idea,

341
00:16:00,582 --> 00:16:02,547
the next story.

342
00:16:02,547 --> 00:16:05,116
There wasn't a moment for the next 14 or 15 years

343
00:16:05,116 --> 00:16:07,119
that I wasn't writing something in my head

344
00:16:07,119 --> 00:16:08,431
or wondering about it.

345
00:16:08,431 --> 00:16:10,999
And I didn't stop and look around and go:

346
00:16:10,999 --> 00:16:13,882
"this is really fun".

347
00:16:13,882 --> 00:16:16,470
I wish I'd enjoyed it more.

348
00:16:16,470 --> 00:16:18,104
It's been an amazing ride,

349
00:16:18,104 --> 00:16:19,682
but there were parts of the ride that I missed,

350
00:16:19,682 --> 00:16:22,333
because I was too worried about things going wrong,

351
00:16:22,333 --> 00:16:25,132
about what came next, to enjoy the bit that I was on.

352
00:16:25,132 --> 00:16:28,448
That was the hardest lesson for me, I think:

353
00:16:28,448 --> 00:16:31,231
to let go, and enjoy the ride.

354
00:16:31,231 --> 00:16:33,598
Because the ride takes you to some remarkable

355
00:16:33,598 --> 00:16:36,686
and unexpected places.

356
00:16:36,686 --> 00:16:39,683
And here, on this platform, today for me

357
00:16:39,683 --> 00:16:42,182
is one of those places

358
00:16:42,182 --> 00:16:45,896
and I am enjoying myself immensely.

359
00:16:45,896 --> 00:16:57,041
[applause]

360
00:16:57,333 --> 00:16:58,859
I'd actually put that in brackets.

361
00:16:58,859 --> 00:17:01,039
Just in case I wasn't, I wouldn't say it.

362
00:17:01,039 --> 00:17:04,871
[laughter]

363
00:17:05,055 --> 00:17:07,546
To all today's graduates:

364
00:17:07,546 --> 00:17:10,784
I wish you luck, luck is useful.

365
00:17:10,784 --> 00:17:13,287
Often you will discover that the harder you work

366
00:17:13,287 --> 00:17:15,098
and the more wisely that you work

367
00:17:15,098 --> 00:17:17,401
the luckier you will get.

368
00:17:17,401 --> 00:17:20,367
But there is luck, and it helps.

369
00:17:20,367 --> 00:17:23,515
We're in a transitional world right now

370
00:17:23,515 --> 00:17:26,682
if you're in any kind of artistic field,

371
00:17:26,682 --> 00:17:29,765
because the nature of distribution is changing.

372
00:17:29,765 --> 00:17:32,950
The models by which creators got their work out into the world

373
00:17:32,950 --> 00:17:34,969
and got to keep a roof over their head

374
00:17:34,969 --> 00:17:37,074
and buy sandwhiches while they did that

375
00:17:37,074 --> 00:17:39,150
they're all changing.

376
00:17:39,150 --> 00:17:41,517
I talked to people at the top of the food chain

377
00:17:41,517 --> 00:17:43,697
in publishing and bookselling,

378
00:17:43,697 --> 00:17:45,682
in music, in all those areas

379
00:17:45,682 --> 00:17:48,514
and no one knows what the landscape will look like

380
00:17:48,514 --> 00:17:52,132
two years from now, let alone a decade away.

381
00:17:52,132 --> 00:17:54,415
The distribution channels that people have built

382
00:17:54,415 --> 00:17:57,448
over the last century or so, are in flux

383
00:17:57,448 --> 00:17:59,581
for print, for visual artists, for musicians,

384
00:17:59,581 --> 00:18:03,247
for creative people of all kinds.

385
00:18:03,247 --> 00:18:05,248
Which is on the one hand intimidating

386
00:18:05,248 --> 00:18:09,516
and on the other, immensely liberating.

387
00:18:09,516 --> 00:18:12,199
The rules, the assumptions, the now-we're-supposed-tos

388
00:18:12,199 --> 00:18:16,015
of how you get your work seen and what you do then,

389
00:18:16,015 --> 00:18:18,658
they're breaking down.

390
00:18:18,658 --> 00:18:22,530
The gatekeepers are leaving their gates.

391
00:18:22,530 --> 00:18:26,763
You can be as creative as you need to be, to get your work seen.

392
00:18:26,763 --> 00:18:30,613
YouTube and the Web and whatever comes after YouTube and the Web

393
00:18:30,613 --> 00:18:32,398
can give you more people watching

394
00:18:32,398 --> 00:18:34,847
than all television ever did.

395
00:18:34,847 --> 00:18:37,152
The old rules are crumbling

396
00:18:37,152 --> 00:18:40,086
and nobody knows what the new rules are.

397
00:18:40,086 --> 00:18:43,115
So make up your own rules.

398
00:18:43,115 --> 00:18:45,167
Someone asked me recently how to do

399
00:18:45,167 --> 00:18:47,170
something she thought was going to be difficult,

400
00:18:47,170 --> 00:18:49,449
in this case recording an audiobook.

401
00:18:49,449 --> 00:18:55,067
And I suggested she pretend that she was someone who could do it.

402
00:18:55,067 --> 00:18:56,214
[laughter]

403
00:18:56,214 --> 00:19:00,350
Not pretend to do it, but pretend she was someone who could.

404
00:19:00,350 --> 00:19:03,132
She put up a notice to this effect on the studio wall

405
00:19:03,132 --> 00:19:06,267
and she said it helped.

406
00:19:06,267 --> 00:19:09,664
So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom

407
00:19:09,664 --> 00:19:13,933
and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise

408
00:19:13,933 --> 00:19:16,861
and then just behave like they would.

409
00:19:16,861 --> 00:19:28,542
[applause]

410
00:19:28,850 --> 00:19:32,411
And now go, and make interesting mistakes,

411
00:19:32,411 --> 00:19:33,766
make amazing mistakes,

412
00:19:33,766 --> 00:19:37,148
make glorious and fantastic mistakes.

413
00:19:37,148 --> 00:19:38,411
Break rules.

414
00:19:38,411 --> 00:19:41,178
Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

415
00:19:41,178 --> 00:19:44,278
Make good art.

416
00:19:44,278 --> 00:19:45,780
Thank you.

417
00:19:45,780 --> 00:19:53,580
[applause]