0:00:01.378,0:00:02.882
Thank you

0:00:02.882,0:00:04.858
[laughter]

0:00:04.858,0:00:09.801
I never really expected to find myself giving advice

0:00:09.801,0:00:15.719
to people graduating from an establishment of higher education.

0:00:15.719,0:00:20.034
I never graduated from any such establishment.

0:00:20.034,0:00:22.389
I never even started at one.

0:00:22.389,0:00:25.156
I escaped from school as soon as I could,

0:00:25.156,0:00:28.493
when the prospect of 4 more years of enforced learning,

0:00:28.493,0:00:33.783
before I could become the writer who I wanted to be, seemed stifling.

0:00:33.783,0:00:35.697
I got out into the world, I wrote

0:00:35.697,0:00:37.781
and I became a better writer the more I wrote.

0:00:37.781,0:00:38.836
And I wrote some more

0:00:38.836,0:00:40.556
and nobody ever seemed to mind

0:00:40.556,0:00:43.346
that I was making it all up as I went along.

0:00:43.346,0:00:45.326
They just read what I wrote and they paid me for it,

0:00:45.326,0:00:46.519
or they didn't.

0:00:46.519,0:00:47.940
[laughter]

0:00:47.940,0:00:49.476
And often they commissioned me

0:00:49.476,0:00:53.128
to write something else for them, which has left me

0:00:53.128,0:00:57.620
with a healhty respect and fondness for higher education,

0:00:57.620,0:01:00.712
that those of my friends and family who attended universities

0:01:00.712,0:01:03.361
were cured of long ago.

0:01:03.361,0:01:06.985
Looking back I've had a remarkable ride.

0:01:06.985,0:01:09.315
I'm not sure I can call it a career,

0:01:09.315,0:01:14.122
because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan,

0:01:14.122,0:01:16.092
and I never did.

0:01:16.092,0:01:19.613
The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was about 15,

0:01:19.613,0:01:21.550
of everything I wanted to do.

0:01:21.550,0:01:24.033
I wanted to write an adult novel,

0:01:24.033,0:01:25.130
a children's book,

0:01:25.130,0:01:26.430
a comic, a movie,

0:01:26.430,0:01:27.971
record an audiobook,

0:01:27.971,0:01:31.610
write an episode of Dr. Who, and so on.

0:01:31.610,0:01:33.179
I didn't have a career,

0:01:33.179,0:01:35.096
I just did the next thing on the list.

0:01:35.096,0:01:39.722
So I thought I'd tell you everything I wished I'd known starting out

0:01:39.722,0:01:41.450
and a few things that looking back on it

0:01:41.450,0:01:43.083
I suppose I did know.

0:01:43.083,0:01:46.654
And I'll also give you the best piece of advice I'd ever got

0:01:46.654,0:01:49.694
which I completely failed to follow.

0:01:49.971,0:01:52.187
First of all,

0:01:52.187,0:01:55.425
when you start out on a career in the arts,

0:01:55.425,0:01:58.919
you have no idea what you're doing.

0:01:58.919,0:02:01.925
This is great.

0:02:01.925,0:02:04.534
People who know what they are doing know the rules

0:02:04.534,0:02:07.362
and they know what is possible and what is impossible.

0:02:07.362,0:02:10.247
You do not, and you should not.

0:02:10.247,0:02:13.617
The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made

0:02:13.617,0:02:17.085
by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible

0:02:17.085,0:02:19.322
by going beyond them.

0:02:19.322,0:02:21.057
And you can.

0:02:21.057,0:02:22.455
If you don't know it's impossible,

0:02:22.455,0:02:24.330
it's easier to do.

0:02:24.330,0:02:26.155
And because nobody's done it before,

0:02:26.155,0:02:27.497
they haven't made up rules

0:02:27.497,0:02:31.925
to stop anyone doing that particular thing again.

0:02:31.925,0:02:38.923
[applause]

0:02:39.338,0:02:42.802
Secondly, if you have an idea of what you want to make,

0:02:42.802,0:02:44.516
what you were put here to do,

0:02:44.516,0:02:47.518
they just go and do that.

0:02:47.518,0:02:50.409
And that's much harder than it's sounds

0:02:50.409,0:02:53.454
and sometimes in the end so much easier than you might imagine.

0:02:53.454,0:02:55.919
Because normally there are things you have to do

0:02:55.919,0:02:58.623
before you can get to the place you want to be.

0:02:58.623,0:03:01.579
I wanted to write comics and novels and stories and films,

0:03:01.579,0:03:03.753
so I became a journalist,

0:03:03.753,0:03:06.697
because journalists are allowed to ask questions

0:03:06.697,0:03:09.070
and to simply go and find out how the world works.

0:03:09.070,0:03:12.148
And, besides, to do those things I needed to write

0:03:12.148,0:03:13.934
and to write well.

0:03:13.934,0:03:16.065
And I was being paid to learn how to write

0:03:16.065,0:03:20.285
economically, crisply, sometimes under adverse conditions

0:03:20.285,0:03:22.653
and on deadline.

0:03:22.653,0:03:26.929
Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear-cut.

0:03:26.929,0:03:29.017
And sometimes it would be almost impossible

0:03:29.017,0:03:31.375
to decide whether or not you're doing the correct thing,

0:03:31.375,0:03:34.013
because you'll have to balance your goals and hopes

0:03:34.013,0:03:36.257
with feeding yourself

0:03:36.257,0:03:37.891
paying debts, finding work

0:03:37.891,0:03:40.326
settling for what you can get.

0:03:40.326,0:03:42.841
Something that worked for me

0:03:42.841,0:03:46.743
was imagining where I wanted to be

0:03:46.743,0:03:50.208
- which was an author, primarily of fiction,

0:03:50.208,0:03:53.627
making good books, making good comics,

0:03:53.627,0:03:55.556
making good drama

0:03:55.556,0:03:57.895
and supporting myself through my words -

0:03:57.895,0:04:00.709
imagining that was a mountain,

0:04:00.709,0:04:04.849
a distant mountain, my goal.

0:04:04.849,0:04:08.674
And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain

0:04:08.674,0:04:10.574
I'd be alright.

0:04:10.574,0:04:13.491
And when I truly was not sure what to do,

0:04:13.491,0:04:14.881
I could stop and think about

0:04:14.881,0:04:18.040
whether it was taking me towards or away from it

0:04:18.040,0:04:19.992
- the mountain.

0:04:19.992,0:04:23.262
I said no to editorial jobs on magazines

0:04:23.262,0:04:25.774
- proper jobs that would have paid proper money -

0:04:25.774,0:04:29.427
bcause I kew that, attractive though they were, for me

0:04:29.427,0:04:32.391
they would have been walking away from the mountain.

0:04:32.391,0:04:33.691
And if those job offers had come earlier

0:04:33.691,0:04:35.886
I might have taken them,

0:04:35.886,0:04:38.296
because they still would have been closer to the mountain

0:04:38.296,0:04:41.091
than I was at that time.

0:04:41.091,0:04:43.059
I learned to write by writing.

0:04:43.059,0:04:46.373
I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure

0:04:46.373,0:04:49.074
and to stop when it felt like work,

0:04:49.074,0:04:53.207
which meant that life did not feel like work.

0:04:53.207,0:04:59.027
Thirdly, when you start out you have to deal with the problems of failure.

0:04:59.027,0:05:01.428
You need to be thick skinned,

0:05:01.428,0:05:04.497
to learn that not every project will survive.

0:05:04.497,0:05:06.701
A freelance life, a life in the arts,

0:05:06.701,0:05:10.166
is sometimes like putting messages in bottles on a desert island

0:05:10.166,0:05:13.790
and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles

0:05:13.790,0:05:15.242
and open it and read it

0:05:15.242,0:05:18.776
and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you

0:05:18.776,0:05:23.174
- appreciation or a commission or money or love.

0:05:23.174,0:05:26.724
And you have to accept that you may put out hundreds of things

0:05:26.724,0:05:30.350
for every bottle that winds up coming back.

0:05:30.350,0:05:34.458
The problems of failure, the problems of discouragement,

0:05:34.458,0:05:36.436
of hopelessness, of hunger.

0:05:36.436,0:05:38.353
You want everything to happen, and you want it now

0:05:38.353,0:05:40.303
and things go wrong.

0:05:40.303,0:05:44.173
My first book, a piece of journalism I'd done only for the money

0:05:44.173,0:05:46.908
and which had already bought me an electric typewriter

0:05:46.908,0:05:50.770
from the advance, should have been a best seller.

0:05:50.770,0:05:52.844
It should have paid me a lot of money,

0:05:52.844,0:05:55.536
if the publisher hadn't gone into involuntary liquidation

0:05:55.536,0:05:57.653
between the first print run selling out

0:05:57.653,0:06:00.141
and the second print run never happening

0:06:00.141,0:06:03.019
and before any royalties could be paid.

0:06:03.019,0:06:04.337
It would have done.

0:06:04.337,0:06:05.973
And I shrugged

0:06:05.973,0:06:07.970
and I still had my electric typewriter

0:06:07.970,0:06:10.288
and enough money to pay the rent for a couple of months.

0:06:10.288,0:06:12.836
And I decided that I'd do my best in the future

0:06:12.836,0:06:16.085
not to write books just for the money.

0:06:16.085,0:06:18.639
If you didn't get the money then you didn't have anything.

0:06:18.639,0:06:22.206
And if I did work I was proud of, and I didn't get the money,

0:06:22.206,0:06:24.619
at least I'd have the work.

0:06:24.619,0:06:26.543
Every now and then

0:06:26.543,0:06:28.120
I forget that rule

0:06:28.120,0:06:30.919
and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard

0:06:30.919,0:06:33.155
and reminds me.

0:06:33.155,0:06:36.086
I don't know that it's an issue for anybody but me

0:06:36.086,0:06:38.271
but it's true that nothing I did

0:06:38.271,0:06:40.271
where the only reason for doing it was the money

0:06:40.271,0:06:42.418
was ever worth it,

0:06:42.418,0:06:45.614
except as bitter experience.

0:06:45.614,0:06:48.187
Usually I didn't wind up getting the money either.

0:06:48.187,0:06:49.973
[laughter]

0:06:49.973,0:06:52.438
The things I did because I was excited

0:06:52.438,0:06:54.219
and wanted to see them exist in reality

0:06:54.219,0:06:56.504
have never let me down, and I've never regretted

0:06:56.504,0:06:59.743
the time I spent on any of them.

0:06:59.743,0:07:01.876
The problems of faillure are hard.

0:07:01.876,0:07:05.987
The problems of success can be harder,

0:07:05.987,0:07:08.271
because nobody warns you about them.

0:07:08.271,0:07:11.535
The first problem of any kind of even limited success

0:07:11.535,0:07:14.454
is the unshakeable conviction that you're getting away with something

0:07:14.454,0:07:17.621
and that any moment now they will discover you.

0:07:17.621,0:07:22.275
[laughter]

0:07:22.275,0:07:25.314
It's Imposter's Syndrome,

0:07:25.314,0:07:29.336
something my wife Amanda christened "The Fraud Police".

0:07:29.336,0:07:33.054
In my case I was convinced there would be a knock on the door

0:07:33.054,0:07:35.330
and a man with a clipboard

0:07:35.330,0:07:37.770
- I don't know why he had a clipboard

0:07:37.770,0:07:40.954
but in my head he always had a clipboard -

0:07:40.954,0:07:44.087
would be there to tell me it was all over

0:07:44.087,0:07:45.421
and they caught up with me

0:07:45.421,0:07:47.839
and now I would have to go and get a real job

0:07:47.839,0:07:52.137
one that didn't consist of making things up and writing them down

0:07:52.137,0:07:54.424
and reading books I wanted to read.

0:07:54.424,0:07:56.103
And then I would go away quietly

0:07:56.103,0:07:57.886
and get the kind of job

0:07:57.886,0:08:00.412
I would have to get up early in the morning

0:08:00.412,0:08:02.336
and wear a tie

0:08:02.336,0:08:05.637
and not make things up anymore.

0:08:05.637,0:08:08.754
The problems of success, they're real

0:08:08.754,0:08:12.253
and with luck, you'll experience them.

0:08:12.253,0:08:14.920
The point where you stop saying yes to everything

0:08:14.920,0:08:18.121
because now the bottles you throw in the ocean are all coming back

0:08:18.121,0:08:21.359
and you have to learn to say "no".

0:08:21.359,0:08:25.820
I watched my peers and my friends and the ones who are older than me

0:08:25.820,0:08:28.839
and I watched how miserable some of them were.

0:08:28.839,0:08:31.287
I'd listen to them telling they couldn't envisage a world

0:08:31.287,0:08:35.170
where they did what they've always wanted to do anymore,

0:08:35.170,0:08:37.903
because now they had to earn a certain amount every month

0:08:37.903,0:08:39.369
just to keep where they were.

0:08:39.369,0:08:41.370
They couldn't go and do the things that mattered

0:08:41.370,0:08:42.953
and that they had really wanted to do

0:08:42.953,0:08:48.999
and that seemed as big a tragedy as any problem of failure.

0:08:48.999,0:08:52.304
And after that, the biggest problem of success

0:08:52.304,0:08:54.169
is that the world conspires

0:08:54.169,0:08:56.903
to stop you doing the thing that you do

0:08:56.903,0:08:58.324
because you're successful.

0:08:58.324,0:09:01.985
There was a day when I looked up and realized

0:09:01.985,0:09:04.173
that I had become someone

0:09:04.173,0:09:07.004
who professionally replied to email

0:09:07.004,0:09:09.586
and he wrote as a hobby.

0:09:09.586,0:09:12.187
I started answering fewer emails

0:09:12.187,0:09:16.379
and was relieved to find, I was writing much more.

0:09:16.810,0:09:21.670
Forthly, I hope you'll make mistakes.

0:09:21.670,0:09:25.890
If you make mistakes, it means you're out there doing something

0:09:25.890,0:09:28.724
and the mistakes in themselves can be very useful.

0:09:28.724,0:09:33.154
I once misspelled Caroline in a letter,

0:09:33.154,0:09:35.839
transposing the A and the O,

0:09:35.839,0:09:37.570
and I thought "Coraline

0:09:37.570,0:09:40.587
looks almost like a real name".

0:09:40.587,0:09:43.820
Remember, whatever discipline you're in,

0:09:43.820,0:09:46.037
whether you're a musician of a photographer,

0:09:46.037,0:09:47.603
a fine artist or a cartoonist,

0:09:47.603,0:09:50.955
a writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer,

0:09:50.955,0:09:53.722
whatever you do, you have one thing that's unique:

0:09:53.722,0:09:57.324
you have the ability to make art.

0:09:57.324,0:10:01.437
And for me, and for so many of the people I've known

0:10:01.437,0:10:03.486
that's been a lifesaver.

0:10:03.486,0:10:04.724
The ultimate lifesaver.

0:10:04.724,0:10:06.443
It gets you though good times, and it gets you

0:10:06.443,0:10:09.102
through the other ones.

0:10:09.102,0:10:12.156
Sometimes life is hard, things go wrong

0:10:12.156,0:10:16.170
in life, and in love, and in business and in friendship

0:10:16.170,0:10:20.354
and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong.

0:10:20.354,0:10:24.790
And when things get though, this is what you should do.

0:10:24.790,0:10:29.204
Make good art.

0:10:29.204,0:10:30.639
I'm serious.

0:10:30.639,0:10:31.957
[laughter]

0:10:31.957,0:10:33.937
Husband runs off with a politician?

0:10:33.937,0:10:36.090
Make good art.

0:10:36.090,0:10:37.927
[laughter]

0:10:37.927,0:10:42.180
Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor?

0:10:42.180,0:10:44.887
Make good art.

0:10:44.887,0:10:47.520
IRS on your trail? Make good art.

0:10:47.520,0:10:53.939
Cat exploded? Make good art.

0:10:53.939,0:10:56.550
Someone on the internet thinks what you're doing

0:10:56.550,0:10:58.753
is stupid or evil or it's all been done before?

0:10:58.753,0:11:01.608
Make good art.

0:11:01.608,0:11:03.786
Probably things will work out somehow,

0:11:03.786,0:11:05.970
eventually time will take the sting away

0:11:05.970,0:11:08.436
and that doesn't even matter.

0:11:08.436,0:11:10.786
Do what only you can do best.

0:11:10.786,0:11:14.070
Make good art.

0:11:14.070,0:11:16.469
Make it on the bad days.

0:11:16.469,0:11:19.557
Make it on the good days too.

0:11:19.772,0:11:21.486
And fifthly, while you're at it,

0:11:21.486,0:11:23.020
make your art.

0:11:23.020,0:11:24.953
Do the stuff that only you can do.

0:11:24.953,0:11:26.987
The urge, starting out, is to copy

0:11:26.987,0:11:28.554
and that is not a bad thing.

0:11:28.554,0:11:30.206
Most of us only find our own voices

0:11:30.206,0:11:32.670
after we've sounded like a lot of other people.

0:11:32.670,0:11:34.219
[laughter]

0:11:34.219,0:11:37.804
But one thing that you have, that nobody else has

0:11:37.804,0:11:45.069
is you, your voice, your mind, your story, your vision.

0:11:45.069,0:11:47.554
So write and draw and build and play

0:11:47.554,0:11:51.254
and dance and live as only you can.

0:11:51.254,0:11:56.409
The moment that you feel that just possibly

0:11:56.409,0:11:58.890
you're walking down the street naked

0:11:58.890,0:12:01.787
exposing too much of your heart and your mind

0:12:01.787,0:12:04.654
and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself,

0:12:04.654,0:12:10.671
that's the moment you may be starting to get it right.

0:12:10.671,0:12:12.687
The things I've done that work the best

0:12:12.687,0:12:15.154
were the things I was the least certain about.

0:12:15.154,0:12:16.787
The stories where I was sure they would either work

0:12:16.787,0:12:20.636
or, more likely, be the kind of embarrassing failures

0:12:20.636,0:12:25.006
that people would gather together and discuss until the end of time.

0:12:25.006,0:12:27.987
They always had that in common: looking back at them

0:12:27.987,0:12:31.210
people explain why they were inevitable successes

0:12:31.210,0:12:34.120
and when I was doing them I had no idea.

0:12:34.120,0:12:35.637
I still don't.

0:12:35.637,0:12:37.668
And where would be the fun in making something

0:12:37.668,0:12:39.387
you knew was going to work?

0:12:39.387,0:12:43.016
And sometimes the things I did really didn't work.

0:12:43.016,0:12:45.854
There are stories of mine that have never been reprinted.

0:12:45.854,0:12:48.920
Some of them have never even left the house.

0:12:48.920,0:12:52.867
But I learned as much from them as I did from the things that worked.

0:12:53.052,0:12:59.472
Ok, sixthly, I'm gonna pass on some secret freelancer knowledge.

0:12:59.472,0:13:02.165
Secret knowledge is always good and it's useful

0:13:02.165,0:13:05.853
for anyone who ever plans to create art for other people,

0:13:05.853,0:13:08.337
to enter a freelance world of any kind.

0:13:08.337,0:13:10.169
I learned it in comics

0:13:10.169,0:13:13.070
but it applies to other fields too, and it's this.

0:13:13.070,0:13:18.718
People get hired because, somehow, they get hired.

0:13:18.718,0:13:20.453
[laughter]

0:13:20.453,0:13:23.822
In my case, I did something which these days would be easy to check

0:13:23.822,0:13:25.438
and would get me into a lot of trouble

0:13:25.438,0:13:27.988
and when I started out in those pre-internet days

0:13:27.988,0:13:30.409
seemed like a sensible career strategy.

0:13:30.409,0:13:33.878
When I was asked by editors who I'd written for,

0:13:33.878,0:13:35.238
I lied.

0:13:35.238,0:13:37.535
[laughter]

0:13:37.535,0:13:40.704
I listed a handful of magazines that sounded likely

0:13:40.704,0:13:43.054
and I sounded confident and I got jobs.

0:13:43.054,0:13:52.982
[cheering]

0:13:53.197,0:13:56.089
I then made it a point of honour to have written

0:13:56.089,0:13:58.470
something for each of the magazines I'd listed

0:13:58.470,0:14:00.804
to get that first job.

0:14:00.804,0:14:02.454
So that I hadn't actually lied,

0:14:02.454,0:14:05.390
I had just been chronologically challenged.

0:14:05.390,0:14:07.229
[laughter]

0:14:07.229,0:14:10.287
But you get work however you get work.

0:14:10.287,0:14:14.454
But people keep working, in a freelance world

0:14:14.454,0:14:17.220
- and more and more of today's world is freelance -

0:14:17.220,0:14:19.919
because the work is good

0:14:19.919,0:14:22.079
and because they're easy to get along with

0:14:22.079,0:14:24.956
and because they deliver the work on time.

0:14:24.956,0:14:28.821
And you don't even need all three.

0:14:28.821,0:14:31.753
Two out of three is fine.

0:14:31.753,0:14:33.487
[laughter]

0:14:33.487,0:14:36.510
People will tolerate how unpleasant you are

0:14:36.510,0:14:39.386
if your work is good and you deliver it on time.

0:14:39.386,0:14:41.346
[laughter]

0:14:41.346,0:14:44.704
People will forgive the lateness of your work

0:14:44.704,0:14:46.269
if it's good and they like you.

0:14:46.269,0:14:47.225
[laughter]

0:14:47.225,0:14:49.638
And you don't have to be as good as everyone else

0:14:49.638,0:14:52.977
if you're on time and it's always a pleasure to hear from you.

0:14:52.977,0:14:55.588
[laughter]

0:14:55.588,0:15:04.645
[applause]

0:15:04.953,0:15:07.768
So when I agreed to give this address

0:15:07.768,0:15:10.833
I thought what is the best piece of advice I was ever given

0:15:10.833,0:15:15.221
and I realized that it was actually a piece of advice

0:15:15.221,0:15:17.506
that I had failed to follow

0:15:17.506,0:15:19.416
and it came from Stephen King.

0:15:19.416,0:15:22.048
It was 20 years ago, at the height of the success

0:15:22.048,0:15:23.366
- the initial success -

0:15:23.366,0:15:26.648
of Sandman, the comic I was writing.

0:15:26.648,0:15:28.815
[applause] Oh thank you

0:15:28.815,0:15:30.447
I was writing a comic people loved

0:15:30.447,0:15:32.348
and they were taking it seriously

0:15:32.348,0:15:34.428
and Stephen King liked Sandman

0:15:34.428,0:15:36.814
and my novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens,

0:15:36.814,0:15:38.863
and he saw the madness that was going on

0:15:38.863,0:15:41.069
- the long signing lines, all of that stuff -

0:15:41.069,0:15:43.236
and his advice to me was this.

0:15:43.236,0:15:45.514
He said "this is really great

0:15:45.514,0:15:48.897
you should enjoy it".

0:15:48.897,0:15:51.503
And I didn't.

0:15:51.503,0:15:54.299
Best advice I ever got that I ignored.

0:15:54.299,0:15:56.849
Instead, I worried about it.

0:15:56.849,0:15:58.797
I worried about the next deadline,

0:15:58.797,0:16:00.582
the next idea,

0:16:00.582,0:16:02.547
the next story.

0:16:02.547,0:16:05.116
There wasn't a moment for the next 14 or 15 years

0:16:05.116,0:16:07.119
that I wasn't writing something in my head

0:16:07.119,0:16:08.431
or wondering about it.

0:16:08.431,0:16:10.999
And I didn't stop and look around and go:

0:16:10.999,0:16:13.882
"this is really fun".

0:16:13.882,0:16:16.470
I wish I'd enjoyed it more.

0:16:16.470,0:16:18.104
It's been an amazing ride,

0:16:18.104,0:16:19.682
but there were parts of the ride that I missed,

0:16:19.682,0:16:22.333
because I was too worried about things going wrong,

0:16:22.333,0:16:25.132
about what came next, to enjoy the bit that I was on.

0:16:25.132,0:16:28.448
That was the hardest lesson for me, I think:

0:16:28.448,0:16:31.231
to let go, and enjoy the ride.

0:16:31.231,0:16:33.598
Because the ride takes you to some remarkable

0:16:33.598,0:16:36.686
and unexpected places.

0:16:36.686,0:16:39.683
And here, on this platform, today for me

0:16:39.683,0:16:42.182
is one of those places

0:16:42.182,0:16:45.896
and I am enjoying myself immensely.

0:16:45.896,0:16:57.041
[applause]

0:16:57.333,0:16:58.859
I'd actually put that in brackets.

0:16:58.859,0:17:01.039
Just in case I wasn't, I wouldn't say it.

0:17:01.039,0:17:04.871
[laughter]

0:17:05.055,0:17:07.546
To all today's graduates:

0:17:07.546,0:17:10.784
I wish you luck, luck is useful.

0:17:10.784,0:17:13.287
Often you will discover that the harder you work

0:17:13.287,0:17:15.098
and the more wisely that you work

0:17:15.098,0:17:17.401
the luckier you will get.

0:17:17.401,0:17:20.367
But there is luck, and it helps.

0:17:20.367,0:17:23.515
We're in a transitional world right now

0:17:23.515,0:17:26.682
if you're in any kind of artistic field,

0:17:26.682,0:17:29.765
because the nature of distribution is changing.

0:17:29.765,0:17:32.950
The models by which creators got their work out into the world

0:17:32.950,0:17:34.969
and got to keep a roof over their head

0:17:34.969,0:17:37.074
and buy sandwhiches while they did that

0:17:37.074,0:17:39.150
they're all changing.

0:17:39.150,0:17:41.517
I talked to people at the top of the food chain

0:17:41.517,0:17:43.697
in publishing and bookselling,

0:17:43.697,0:17:45.682
in music, in all those areas

0:17:45.682,0:17:48.514
and no one knows what the landscape will look like

0:17:48.514,0:17:52.132
two years from now, let alone a decade away.

0:17:52.132,0:17:54.415
The distribution channels that people have built

0:17:54.415,0:17:57.448
over the last century or so, are in flux

0:17:57.448,0:17:59.581
for print, for visual artists, for musicians,

0:17:59.581,0:18:03.247
for creative people of all kinds.

0:18:03.247,0:18:05.248
Which is on the one hand intimidating

0:18:05.248,0:18:09.516
and on the other, immensely liberating.

0:18:09.516,0:18:12.199
The rules, the assumptions, the now-we're-supposed-tos

0:18:12.199,0:18:16.015
of how you get your work seen and what you do then,

0:18:16.015,0:18:18.658
they're breaking down.

0:18:18.658,0:18:22.530
The gatekeepers are leaving their gates.

0:18:22.530,0:18:26.763
You can be as creative as you need to be, to get your work seen.

0:18:26.763,0:18:30.613
YouTube and the Web and whatever comes after YouTube and the Web

0:18:30.613,0:18:32.398
can give you more people watching

0:18:32.398,0:18:34.847
than all television ever did.

0:18:34.847,0:18:37.152
The old rules are crumbling

0:18:37.152,0:18:40.086
and nobody knows what the new rules are.

0:18:40.086,0:18:43.115
So make up your own rules.

0:18:43.115,0:18:45.167
Someone asked me recently how to do

0:18:45.167,0:18:47.170
something she thought was going to be difficult,

0:18:47.170,0:18:49.449
in this case recording an audiobook.

0:18:49.449,0:18:55.067
And I suggested she pretend that she was someone who could do it.

0:18:55.067,0:18:56.214
[laughter]

0:18:56.214,0:19:00.350
Not pretend to do it, but pretend she was someone who could.

0:19:00.350,0:19:03.132
She put up a notice to this effect on the studio wall

0:19:03.132,0:19:06.267
and she said it helped.

0:19:06.267,0:19:09.664
So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom

0:19:09.664,0:19:13.933
and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise

0:19:13.933,0:19:16.861
and then just behave like they would.

0:19:16.861,0:19:28.542
[applause]

0:19:28.850,0:19:32.411
And now go, and make interesting mistakes,

0:19:32.411,0:19:33.766
make amazing mistakes,

0:19:33.766,0:19:37.148
make glorious and fantastic mistakes.

0:19:37.148,0:19:38.411
Break rules.

0:19:38.411,0:19:41.178
Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

0:19:41.178,0:19:44.278
Make good art.

0:19:44.278,0:19:45.780
Thank you.

0:19:45.780,0:19:53.580
[applause]