0:00:01.271,0:00:04.421 thank you 0:00:04.421,0:00:07.504 I never really expected 0:00:07.504,0:00:11.687 to find myself giving advice to people graduating 0:00:11.687,0:00:16.304 from an establishment of higher education. 0:00:16.304,0:00:20.104 I never graduated from any such establishment. 0:00:20.104,0:00:24.921 I've not even started at one. I escaped from school as soon as I could, 0:00:24.921,0:00:28.905 when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning 0:00:28.905,0:00:33.636 before I'd become the writer I wanted to be seems stifling. 0:00:33.636,0:00:36.104 I got out into the world, I wrote till I became a better writer the more I wrote, 0:00:36.104,0:00:39.704 and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind 0:00:39.704,0:00:43.803 that I was making it all up as I went along, they just read what I wrote 0:00:43.803,0:00:48.138 and they paid me for it, or they didn't, 0:00:48.138,0:00:50.621 and often they commissioned me to write something else for them. 0:00:50.621,0:00:57.414 Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education 0:00:57.414,0:01:00.287 that those of my friends and family, who attended Universities, 0:01:00.287,0:01:03.722 were cured of long ago. 0:01:03.722,0:01:06.805 Looking back, I've had a remarkable ride. 0:01:06.805,0:01:09.154 I'm not sure I can call it a career, 0:01:09.154,0:01:13.204 because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan, 0:01:13.204,0:01:15.987 and I never did. 0:01:15.987,0:01:19.406 The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was 15 0:01:19.406,0:01:23.637 of everything I wanted to do. I wanted to write an adult novel, 0:01:23.637,0:01:27.321 a children's book, a comic, a movie, record an audiobook, 0:01:27.321,0:01:31.838 write an episode of Doctor Who... and so on. 0:01:31.838,0:01:34.637 I didn't have a career. I just did the next thing on the list. 0:01:34.637,0:01:39.786 So I thought I'd tell you everything I wish I'd known starting out, 0:01:39.786,0:01:43.354 and a few things that, looking back on it, I suppose that I did know. 0:01:43.354,0:01:47.471 And that I'll also give you the best piece of advice I'd ever got,[br] 0:01:47.471,0:01:50.721 which I completely failed to follow. 0:01:50.721,0:01:54.938 First of all, When you start out on a career in the arts 0:01:54.938,0:01:59.403 you have no idea what you are doing. 0:01:59.403,0:02:02.521 This is great. People who know 0:02:02.521,0:02:07.430 what they are doing know the rules, and they know what is possible and impossible. 0:02:07.430,0:02:10.463 You do not. And you should not. 0:02:10.463,0:02:14.246 The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people 0:02:14.246,0:02:19.113 who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. 0:02:19.113,0:02:22.330 And you can. [br]If you don't know it's impossible 0:02:22.330,0:02:25.747 it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, 0:02:25.747,0:02:29.247 they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again. 0:02:29.247,0:02:39.746 (Cheering) 0:02:39.746,0:02:41.666 Secondly, If you have an idea 0:02:41.666,0:02:45.283 of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just 0:02:45.283,0:02:48.830 go and do that. [br]And that's much harder 0:02:48.830,0:02:53.098 than it sounds and, sometimes in the end, so much easier than you might imagine. 0:02:53.098,0:02:56.563 Because normally, there are things you have to do before you can get 0:02:56.563,0:03:00.646 to the place you want to be. I wanted to write comics and novels 0:03:00.646,0:03:03.630 and stories and films, so I became a journalist, 0:03:03.630,0:03:08.746 because journalists are allowed to ask questions, and to simply go and find out how the world works, 0:03:08.746,0:03:11.546 and besides, to do those things I needed to write 0:03:11.546,0:03:16.496 and to write well, and I was being paid to learn how to write economically, 0:03:16.496,0:03:20.813 crisply, sometimes under adverse conditions, 0:03:20.813,0:03:23.463 and on deadline. 0:03:23.463,0:03:27.930 Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear cut, and sometimes it will be 0:03:27.930,0:03:31.146 almost impossible to decide whether or not you are doing the correct thing, 0:03:31.146,0:03:36.080 because you'll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, 0:03:36.080,0:03:40.730 paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get. 0:03:40.730,0:03:43.496 Something that worked for me was 0:03:43.496,0:03:47.680 imagining that where I wanted to be 0:03:47.680,0:03:55.597 which is an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics, making good drama 0:03:55.597,0:04:00.881 and supporting myself through my words 0:04:00.881,0:04:04.699 Imagining that was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal. 0:04:04.699,0:04:10.514 And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. 0:04:10.514,0:04:13.947 And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, 0:04:13.947,0:04:20.248 and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. 0:04:20.248,0:04:23.248 I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, 0:04:23.248,0:04:26.866 proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, 0:04:26.866,0:04:32.198 attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. 0:04:32.198,0:04:35.633 And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, 0:04:35.633,0:04:41.098 because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time. 0:04:41.098,0:04:43.365 I learned to write by writing. 0:04:43.365,0:04:46.215 I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, [br] 0:04:46.215,0:04:53.664 and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work. 0:04:53.664,0:04:56.348 Thirdly, When you start out, [br] 0:04:56.348,0:04:59.843 you have to deal with the problems of failure. 0:04:59.843,0:05:04.660 You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive. 0:05:04.660,0:05:07.011 A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like 0:05:07.011,0:05:10.943 putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that 0:05:10.943,0:05:15.910 someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, 0:05:15.910,0:05:19.644 and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: 0:05:19.644,0:05:23.909 appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. 0:05:23.909,0:05:27.777 And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle 0:05:27.777,0:05:31.576 that winds up coming back. 0:05:31.576,0:05:34.194 The problems of failure. The problems of discouragement, 0:05:34.194,0:05:38.393 of hopelessness, of hunger. You want everything to happen and you want it now, 0:05:38.393,0:05:43.225 and things go wrong. My first book – a piece of journalism 0:05:43.225,0:05:46.310 I had done only for the money, and which had already bought me 0:05:46.310,0:05:51.326 an electric typewriter from the advance – should have been a bestseller. 0:05:51.326,0:05:54.027 It should have paid me a lot of money. If the publisher hadn't gone 0:05:54.027,0:05:57.177 into involuntary liquidation between the first print run selling out 0:05:57.177,0:06:00.976 and the second print run never happening, and before any royalties 0:06:00.976,0:06:05.592 could be paid, it would have done. And I shrugged, 0:06:05.592,0:06:08.760 and I still had my electric typewriter and enough money 0:06:08.760,0:06:12.760 to pay the rent for a couple of months, and I decided that I'd do my best in future 0:06:12.760,0:06:17.259 not to write books just for the money. If you didn't get the money, 0:06:17.259,0:06:20.443 then you didn't have anything. If I did work I was proud of, [br] 0:06:20.443,0:06:23.710 and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work. 0:06:23.710,0:06:28.878 Every now and then, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, 0:06:28.878,0:06:33.092 the universe kicks me hard and reminds me. 0:06:33.092,0:06:36.901 I don't know that it's an issue for anybody but me, but it's true 0:06:36.901,0:06:40.176 that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money 0:06:40.176,0:06:45.861 was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. 0:06:45.861,0:06:50.243 Usually I didn't wind up getting the money, either. 0:06:50.243,0:06:52.926 (Laughter)[br]The things I did because I was excited, 0:06:52.926,0:06:55.761 and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I've 0:06:55.761,0:06:59.890 never regretted the time I spent on any of them. 0:06:59.890,0:07:05.063 The problems of failure are hard.[br]The problems of success 0:07:05.063,0:07:08.753 can be harder, because nobody warns you about them. 0:07:08.753,0:07:11.787 The first problem of any kind of even limited success 0:07:11.787,0:07:15.270 is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that 0:07:15.270,0:07:21.171 any moment now they will discover you. [br](Laughter) 0:07:21.171,0:07:24.020 (Cheering) 0:07:24.020,0:07:26.804 It's Imposter Syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened 0:07:26.804,0:07:30.739 the Fraud Police. In my case, 0:07:30.739,0:07:34.338 I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard 0:07:34.338,0:07:38.788 I don't know why he had a clipboard but in my head 0:07:38.788,0:07:43.637 he always has clipboard, would be there to tell me 0:07:43.637,0:07:49.054 it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job, 0:07:49.054,0:07:52.352 one that didn't consist of making things up and writing them down, 0:07:52.352,0:07:55.405 and reading books I wanted to read. And then I would go away 0:07:55.405,0:07:58.438 quietly and get the kind of job 0:07:58.438,0:08:02.622 that I would have to get up early in the morning, and wear a tie 0:08:02.622,0:08:06.154 and not make things up any more. 0:08:06.154,0:08:09.370 The problems of success. They're real, and with luck 0:08:09.370,0:08:14.321 you'll experience them. The point where you stop saying yes 0:08:14.321,0:08:15.586 to everything, because 0:08:15.586,0:08:19.154 now the bottles you threw in the ocean are all coming back, and you have to 0:08:19.154,0:08:22.321 learn to say no. I watched 0:08:22.321,0:08:27.102 my peers, and my friends, and the ones who were older than me and watch how miserable 0:08:27.102,0:08:30.571 some of them were. I'd listen to them telling me that they couldn't envisage 0:08:30.571,0:08:34.388 a world where they did what they had always wanted to do any more, 0:08:34.388,0:08:39.204 because now they had to earn a certain amount every month just to keep where they were. 0:08:39.204,0:08:42.771 They couldn't go and do the things that mattered, and that they had really wanted to do; 0:08:42.771,0:08:46.516 and that seemed as a big a tragedy 0:08:46.516,0:08:50.854 as any problem of failure. And after that 0:08:50.854,0:08:53.738 the biggest problem of success is that the world conspires 0:08:53.738,0:08:59.054 to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful. 0:08:59.054,0:09:02.020 There was a day when I looked up and realised that 0:09:02.020,0:09:07.204 I had become someone who professionally replied to email, 0:09:07.204,0:09:10.120 and who wrote as a hobby. 0:09:10.120,0:09:13.420 I started answering fewer emails, and was relieved to find 0:09:13.420,0:09:17.571 I was writing much more. 0:09:17.571,0:09:22.287 Fourthly, I hope you'll make mistakes. 0:09:22.287,0:09:26.371 If you're making mistakes, it means you're out there doing something. And the mistakes 0:09:26.371,0:09:29.987 in themselves can be useful. I once misspelled 0:09:29.987,0:09:34.171 Caroline, in a letter, transposing the A [br] 0:09:34.171,0:09:37.420 and the O, and I thought, “Coraline 0:09:37.420,0:09:41.572 looks almost like a real name...” 0:09:41.572,0:09:46.615 remember that whatever discipline you are in, whether you are a musician or a photographer, a fine artist 0:09:46.615,0:09:50.321 or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a singer 0:09:50.321,0:09:53.421 a designer, whatever you do you have one thing that's unique. 0:09:53.421,0:09:58.471 You have the ability to make art. 0:09:58.471,0:10:03.087 And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that's been a lifesaver. 0:10:03.087,0:10:05.971 The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets 0:10:05.971,0:10:11.305 you through the other ones. [br]Sometimes life is hard. 0:10:11.305,0:10:12.971 Things go wrong, in life 0:10:12.971,0:10:18.020 and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all 0:10:18.020,0:10:22.655 the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, 0:10:22.655,0:10:26.072 this is what you should do.[br] 0:10:26.072,0:10:29.504 Make good art. 0:10:29.504,0:10:33.454 I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician? 0:10:33.454,0:10:38.918 Make good art. 0:10:38.918,0:10:42.537 Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? 0:10:42.537,0:10:46.187 Make good art. 0:10:46.187,0:10:48.019 IRS on your trail? Make good art. 0:10:48.019,0:10:52.104 Cat exploded? Make good art. 0:10:52.104,0:10:57.254 Somebody on the Internet thinks what you doing is stupid or evil 0:10:57.254,0:11:02.022 or it's all been done before? Make good art. 0:11:02.022,0:11:05.837 Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, 0:11:05.837,0:11:08.387 but that doesn't even matter. 0:11:08.387,0:11:14.620 Do what only you could do best. Make good art. 0:11:14.620,0:11:16.655 Make it on the bad days 0:11:16.655,0:11:19.738 Make it on the good days too. 0:11:19.738,0:11:23.655 And Fifthly, while you are at it, make your art. Do the stuff [br] 0:11:23.655,0:11:26.387 that only you can do. The urge, starting out, is to copy. 0:11:26.387,0:11:31.187 And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like 0:11:31.187,0:11:35.305 a lot of other people. But the one thing 0:11:35.305,0:11:40.473 that you have that nobody else has is you. 0:11:40.473,0:11:43.720 Your voice, your mind, your story, 0:11:43.720,0:11:46.753 your vision. So write and draw and build 0:11:46.753,0:11:51.904 and play and dance and live as only you can. 0:11:51.904,0:11:56.788 The moment that you feel that, just possibly, 0:11:56.788,0:11:59.119 you're walking down the street naked, 0:11:59.119,0:12:03.021 exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, 0:12:03.021,0:12:06.485 showing too much of yourself. That's the moment you may be 0:12:06.485,0:12:11.122 starting to get it right. 0:12:11.122,0:12:14.021 The things I've done that worked the best were the things I was 0:12:14.021,0:12:17.871 the least certain about, the stories where I was sure they would either work, or more likely 0:12:17.871,0:12:22.204 be the kinds of embarrassing failures people would gather together [br] 0:12:22.204,0:12:26.254 and discuss until the end of time. They always had that 0:12:26.254,0:12:31.171 in common: looking back at them, people explain why they were inevitable successes. 0:12:31.171,0:12:34.437 While I was doing them, I had no idea. 0:12:34.437,0:12:40.104 I still don't. And where would be the fun in making something you knew was going to work?[br] 0:12:40.104,0:12:43.556 And sometimes the things I did really didn't work. 0:12:43.556,0:12:46.421 There are stories of mine that have never been reprinted. 0:12:46.421,0:12:50.254 Some of them never even left the house. But I learned as much from them 0:12:50.254,0:12:53.537 as I did from the things that worked. 0:12:53.537,0:13:00.354 OK. Sixthly. I gonna pass on some secret freelancer knowledge. 0:13:00.354,0:13:02.121 Secret knowledge is always good. 0:13:02.121,0:13:05.722 And it is useful for anyone who ever plans to create art for other people, 0:13:05.722,0:13:10.125 to enter a freelance world of any kind. I learned it in comics, 0:13:10.125,0:13:12.171 but it applies to other fields too. And it's this: 0:13:12.171,0:13:17.521 People get hired because, somehow, 0:13:17.521,0:13:21.739 they get hired. In my case I did 0:13:21.739,0:13:25.753 something which these days would be easy to check, and would get me into trouble, 0:13:25.753,0:13:30.587 and when I started out, in those pre-internet days, seemed like a sensible career strategy: 0:13:30.587,0:13:33.752 when I was asked by editors who I'd written for, 0:13:33.752,0:13:38.091 I lied. 0:13:38.091,0:13:40.726 I listed a handful of magazines that sounded likely, 0:13:40.726,0:13:44.389 and I sounded confident, and I got jobs. 0:13:44.389,0:13:53.789 (Cheering) 0:13:53.789,0:13:56.585 I then made it a point of honour to have written something 0:13:56.585,0:14:00.343 for each of the magazines I'd listed to get that first job, 0:14:00.343,0:14:06.709 so that I hadn't actually lied, I'd just been chronologically challenged... 0:14:06.709,0:14:08.254 But you get work 0:14:08.254,0:14:11.553 however you get work. But people keep working 0:14:11.553,0:14:15.959 in a freelance world, and more and more of today's 0:14:15.959,0:14:20.092 world is freelance, because their work is good, 0:14:20.092,0:14:25.419 and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. 0:14:25.480,0:14:29.354 And you don't even need all three. 0:14:29.354,0:14:33.653 Two out of three is fine. 0:14:33.653,0:14:35.221 People will tolerate how 0:14:35.221,0:14:42.988 unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. 0:14:42.988,0:14:44.137 People will forgive the 0:14:44.137,0:14:47.370 lateness of the work if it's good, and if they like you. And 0:14:47.370,0:14:50.987 you don't have to be as good as the everyone else if you're on time and 0:14:50.987,0:14:54.662 it's always a pleasure to hear from you. 0:14:54.662,0:15:05.295 (Cheering) 0:15:05.295,0:15:07.750 So when I agreed to give this address, 0:15:07.750,0:15:11.780 I though what is the best piece of advice I'd been given.[br] 0:15:11.780,0:15:14.829 And I realised that it was actually a piece of advice[br] 0:15:14.829,0:15:19.845 that I have failed to follow. And it came from Stephen King 0:15:19.845,0:15:22.145 It was twenty years ago, at the height of the success 0:15:22.145,0:15:27.694 of Sandman, the comic I was writing. 0:15:27.694,0:15:30.380 Oh! Thank you. I was writing a comic that people loved 0:15:30.380,0:15:34.629 and I was taking it seriously. And Stephen King liked Sandman 0:15:34.629,0:15:38.878 and my novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, and he--he saw the madness that was going on 0:15:38.878,0:15:42.962 the long signing lines, all that stuffs, and his advice was this: 0:15:42.962,0:15:49.717 “This is really great. You should enjoy it.” 0:15:49.717,0:15:52.403 And I didn't. Best advice 0:15:52.403,0:15:56.470 I've ever got and I ignored it. Instead I worried about it. 0:15:56.470,0:16:01.274 I worried about the next deadline, the next idea, 0:16:01.274,0:16:04.159 the next story. There wasn't a moment for the next 0:16:04.159,0:16:08.092 fourteen or fifteen years that I wasn't writing something in my head, or wondering about it. 0:16:08.092,0:16:11.008 And I didn't stop and look around and go, 0:16:11.008,0:16:16.574 this is really fun. I wish I'd enjoyed it more. 0:16:16.574,0:16:19.541 It's been an amazing ride. But there were parts of the ride I missed, 0:16:19.541,0:16:23.407 because I was too worried about things going wrong, about what came next, to enjoy 0:16:23.407,0:16:27.941 the bit that I was on. That was the hardest lesson for me, 0:16:27.941,0:16:31.557 I think, to let go and enjoy the ride, 0:16:31.557,0:16:37.241 because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places. 0:16:37.241,0:16:39.541 And here, on this platform, today, 0:16:39.541,0:16:42.775 for me, is one of those places. 0:16:42.775,0:16:46.093 And I am enjoying myself immensely. 0:16:46.093,0:16:57.674 (Cheering) 0:16:57.674,0:16:58.823 And I actually put that in bracket 0:16:58.823,0:17:05.574 Just in case I wasn't. I wouldn't say 0:17:05.574,0:17:08.407 To all today's graduates: 0:17:08.407,0:17:11.108 I wish you luck. Luck is useful. 0:17:11.108,0:17:15.220 Often you will discover that the harder you work, and the more wisely you work, 0:17:15.220,0:17:18.906 the luckier you will get. But there is luck, 0:17:18.906,0:17:22.356 and it helps. We're in a transitional 0:17:22.356,0:17:26.640 world right now, if you're in any kind of artistic field, 0:17:26.640,0:17:30.157 because the nature of distribution is changing, the models 0:17:30.157,0:17:34.207 by which creators got their work out into the world, and got to keep a roof over 0:17:34.207,0:17:39.807 their heads and buy sandwiches while they did that, are all changing. 0:17:39.807,0:17:42.141 I've talked to people at the top of the food chain in publishing, 0:17:42.141,0:17:46.141 in bookselling, in music, in all those areas, and 0:17:46.141,0:17:50.524 nobody knows what the landscape will look like two years from now, 0:17:50.524,0:17:53.957 let alone a decade away. The distribution channels that people 0:17:53.957,0:17:57.573 had built over the last century or so are in flux 0:17:57.573,0:18:03.274 for print, for visual artists, for musicians, for creative people of all kinds. 0:18:03.274,0:18:06.540 Which is, on the one hand, intimidating, 0:18:06.540,0:18:09.330 and on the other, immensely liberating. 0:18:09.330,0:18:11.591 The rules, the assumptions, the now-we're 0:18:11.591,0:18:16.907 supposed to's of how you get your work seen, and what you do then, 0:18:16.907,0:18:19.988 are breaking down. The gatekeepers 0:18:19.988,0:18:23.275 are leaving their gates. You can be as creative 0:18:23.275,0:18:27.608 as you need to be to get your work seen. YouTube 0:18:27.608,0:18:31.324 and the web and whatever comes after YouTube and the web can give you 0:18:31.324,0:18:35.591 more people watching than old television ever did. 0:18:35.591,0:18:40.808 The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are. 0:18:40.808,0:18:43.807 So make up your own rules. 0:18:43.807,0:18:47.307 Someone asked me recently how to do something she thought was going to be difficult, 0:18:47.307,0:18:51.073 in this case recording an audio book, and I suggested 0:18:51.073,0:18:55.122 she pretend that she was someone who could do it. 0:18:55.122,0:19:00.524 Not pretend to do it, but pretend she was someone who could. 0:19:00.524,0:19:03.625 She put up a notice to this effect on the studio wall, 0:19:03.625,0:19:08.407 and she said it helped. So be wise, 0:19:08.407,0:19:11.272 because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot 0:19:11.272,0:19:19.623 be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would. 0:19:19.623,0:19:29.424 (Cheering) 0:19:29.424,0:19:31.740 And now go, and make interesting 0:19:31.740,0:19:34.980 mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious 0:19:34.980,0:19:38.894 and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world 0:19:38.894,0:19:43.878 more interesting for your being here. Make good art. 0:19:44.179,0:19:48.179 Thank you[br](Cheering)