Author: Dan Blank

I work with writers because I absolutely love how the lone creative vision of an individual can create so much. I remember when I was working with bestselling author Joseph Finder who talked to me about his books being made into big budget Hollywood movies. He described being on set of a film based on his book, starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd, and how it took so many people to create a single scene. From the actors to the lighting directors, and sound people, set builders, director, so many other people. Yet to create that scene in his book, it just took him alone in a room, writing.

I love the idea of the lone creator — that you have this ability to create wherever you are, with whatever you have, in whatever context you are in.

But to realize the dream of where our creative vision may lead often takes collaboration. While the creative process can be solitary, the publishing and sharing process benefits from collaboration. In helping writers share their work, develop their audience, and launch their books, the social parts are often the most difficult. It’s common for a writer tell me that getting their work out there feels more difficult than creating it.

When you open yourself up to collaboration, your work is given new life, and a new ability to reach more people.

Today I want to explore this in three ways, with stories from a wide range of creative fields, including film, books, comics, and video. Let’s dig in…

Perception Vs. Reality of the Lone Writer

I often go back to this 2013 video from bestselling author John Green, where he talks about how people often hold him up as an example of a writer who can sell books without the help of collaborators, because he has a large audience on social media. He strongly disagrees, saying:

“I wouldn’t have any books to my name without the tireless and committed collaboration not only of my editor Julie Strauss-Gabel, my agent Jodi Reamer, my friends my family, everyone at Penguin, but also the collaboration of thousands of other people: copy editors, warehouse employees, programmers, people who know how to make servers work, librarians, and booksellers. We must strike down the insidious lie that a book is the creation of an individual soul laboring in isolation. We must strike it down because it threatens the overall quality and breadth of American literature… Without my editor, my first novel, Looking for Alaska, would have been unreadably self-indulgent, and even after she helped me make it better it wouldn’t have found its audience without unflagging support, now more than eight years on, from booksellers around the country.”

I’m always curious about the perception of how great work is created vs. the reality. Let me give you an example…

If you watch the movie Pulp Fiction, it ends with: “Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino.” That has become a signature of all of Quentin’s movies. Except, that isn’t true. Pulp Fiction is cited again and again as one of the greatest films of all time, and often put within the top 10. So who actually wrote it?

Well, it turns out that Quentin wrote a lot of it, but his friend and collaborator Roger Avary wrote a lot of it too, including the entire middle sequence which has some of the most classic scenes and lines. I mean, they even won an Oscar together for Best Original Screenplay for the film:

As I dove into this by reading and listening to interviews, I was fascinated by the obfuscation. They spent a long time together writing Pulp Fiction, so how does Quentin justify excluding Roger from the credit? In one interview he says:

“Roger Avary came up with the idea. He’d written a whole script for a movie. I didn’t want to do the whole thing, only one section that fit into Pulp Fiction. I bought the script the way you’d buy a book to make into a movie, just to adapt the part that I liked. That was the scene when the boxer throws the fight and gets chased down by the other guy and they end up in a pawnshop with two guys who are serial killers.”

I mean, that sounds reasonable, right? Except when you hear more about how they collaborated on everything, and spent a long time together developing the film. In fact, the original idea for the film was that Quentin write and direct one sequence, Roger another, and a third filmmaker do the third. When that third guy missed his deadlines, Quentin sort of took over… all of it.

How did Roger lose credit? From what I can tell, Quentin simply said that he would like the credits to read a certain way, with the film ending with the card “Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino.” I mean, wouldn’t that be nice for Quentin? He offered Roger credit in a “Stories by…” card which would include Quentin’s name, as well. They were friends, so Roger simply agreed.

The difference? A huge reputation shift because people commonly perceive that Quentin wrote Pulp Fiction all by himself. The fact that he is known for his dialogue underscores how removing the credit of another can impact how we view the film and creators.

The Idea Vs. The Execution

Remember all those Marvel movies that made an estimated $29.8 billion dollars based on characters created by Stan Lee? You know: Iron Man, Hulk, Avengers, and so many others. Um, well Stan didn’t create them alone.

It turns out that there is this guy named Jack Kirby who co-created many of these characters with Lee. In the comic book world, Jack is a legend. But in film and popular culture, we only ever hear about Stan Lee. Why is that?

(Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Photo by Scott Anderson.)

I’ve read about this for years in books, articles, and interviews, and there have been legal cases for decades. To me, the most satisfying answer is a difference in perspective.

Why did Stan feel okay taking credit? He justified that the person who had the original idea is the true creator. What’s the problem with that for his collaborators? That sometimes, the initial idea was vague and unformed, and the illustrator (in this case Kirby) would do a ton of original creation as the character was developed, getting rid of ideas, adding new ones, and shaping the characters in profound ways.

It’s incredible to see the body of work that Jack Kirby created over the years — and the scope and pace of his output is just amazing. Yet… Stan is the household name.

The concepts here aren’t just emblematic of a broken system, where the comics industry had no guidelines or safeguards for credit or copyright. I’ve heard content creator Casey Neistat say many times that he firmly believes: “It’s the execution that matters, never the idea.” Or another version: “Ideas are common, execution is everything.”

Who is Casey? He became a sensation around a decade ago with his viral videos on YouTube, and by doing a daily vlog for years. He has 12 million YouTube followers and is a huge influence on many popular video creators.

He talks about how “most of his ideas are mediocre,” and has showcased how difficult the process is to turn an idea into reality. In his 534 daily vlogs, many of them were sharing the nuances of the creative process and collaboration.

We can see the exact same idea showcased in the film The Social Network, which is about the creation of Facebook. Two brothers came up with the idea for it and hired a programmer to take care of the tech side of it. The programmer then built it, launched it, and took total ownership, justifying it by saying the idea alone is feeble, and the execution was difficult, meaning he alone owns it.

Tools as Collaborators

We are moving into a fascinating age where now the tools we use can also become our collaborators through AI.

I have a collection of old typewriters, but not once have they helped me craft a sentence, given me new ideas, or asked for me to “chat” with them:

When I spoke with author Dani Shapiro back in 2017, she talked about how the tool that most writers use to create — a computer — is also the source of their greatest distraction. I wonder how that may be compounded once AI is all around you — in your word processing program, on your computer, your phone, etc. What if you are always a millisecond away from just saying, “Hey AI, give me another way to start this paragraph?”

Where is that line between creator and collaborator?

Just as a movie may have one writer on the title card, the reality is that many people may have contributed lines and ideas, including actors who ad lib ideas while shooting. The Empire Strikes Back has two writer credits and one “story by” credit. Yet none of those are responsible for one of the most famous lines of the movie, ad-libbed by Harrison Ford while filming:

Princess Leia: “I love you.”

Han Solo: “I know.”

It’s a line that perfectly sums up the character and reflects the nuanced relationship between the two of them in one of the most harrowing moments in the series. And of course, a line that is wildly better than what was in the script: “I love you, too.”

If you are struggling to consider how to move your creative work forward or how to share it with your ideal readers in a meaningful way, I encourage you to consider a collaboration. This does not have to be some big formal strategic process — simply reach out to one person. Ask for their help. Or flip it around and ask how you can best support their work. You will learn a lot in the process, and turn it from an act of isolation, to one of connection.

Thank you for being here with me.
-Dan

I have this strange hobby: whenever I see an old house or building in my town about to be torn down, it becomes my obsession. I take photos of the process, and to the best of my ability, try to be there for the destruction. I am sentimental about old things, and I desperately want it all to be preserved.

Why write about this today? Because each of you are building something. You are a writer or creator, and there is a message or story inside of you that needs to be expressed. This process helps you understand yourself and the world better. And it has the potential to help others understand themselves and the world better too.

When a reader comes to your work, there needs to be a sense of trust of where you will take them. That they are safe in your hands, yet there is a sense of potential of where you may go, even if it is surprising and unexpected.

In what you create, you hope that it is preserved. That your ideas and stories and writing won’t fade away. That they are filled with potential for who it will reach, how it will grow, and the impact it may have. The goal? That your work is sustained over time. And that you as a writer can persist and continue to create.

Invariably, this is about creating that special place of trust and potential.

Whenever I see an old building about to be destroyed, I think about the loss of stories of those who lived there, and the loss of potential of future generations who could have experienced it as well. Sure, it’s all just wood and brick and nails, but they represent so much more.

Today I want to take you on a little journey, and end with some conclusions I have come to about how we preserve our ability to create. Let’s dig in…

Invest in Possibility and Connection

A few years back an old movie theater in my town was under threat to be destroyed. At the time, I began showing up to every planning board, zoning board, and historic preservation meeting. Not just those about the theater, all of them, including the mundane ones where someone wanted to expand their driveway 5 feet. I just sat there, listening, seeing how the process worked.

Allow me to share the history of this theater in photos. Here it is being built in the 1920s:

This is what the finished theater looked like inside:

Here is the outside as it looked a few years back:

This is the process of destroying it:

This is the new building being finished in its place. It will have dozens of condos in it, plus a couple retail stores:

And this is the last remaining brick from the original theater, which I saved and display here in my studio as a reminder:

Here are other old buildings that have been destroyed in my town. For each of these, I would often stand outside for hours watching them be torn down:

You may notice small details in each of these, such as the third floor room painted in a rainbow of colors signifying a child’s playroom, or the large world map painted onto a wall of a room that may have been a home classroom, or the home office of a history buff.

For each of these, a new home now stands, and on larger lots, 3 or 4 homes have been built in the place of one.

Preserve What You Create – And Support Creators You Love

In the past, I had often considered that it takes years to create something and a moment to destroy it. And of course, that can be true in some case.

But in my hobby of obsessing about old buildings here in town, I noticed something surprising: it often takes years to destroy something. Thousands of actions of neglect. Ignoring threats that could take away a beloved place. The lack of will to collaborate and take a chance to preserve something.

Some of it is simple: never maintaining or repairing a structure, until the wood is rotten, the bricks crumbing, and the systems outdated. These inactions allow the structure to get to the point where saving it becomes a massive undertaking because of how dilapidated it had become.

I see this happen with creative work as well. When someone barely shows up to create. When they do the minimum to share it. When they continue to have big aspirations of what could happen with their creative vision, but it gets overshadowed by other priorities.

Of course, sometimes, that is simply life. Tending to our families, our jobs, or physical and mental health, and a vast array of other responsibilities can take priority, and for good reason. But other times we simply don’t tend to our creative work out of distraction. These small moments of neglect can add up. Sometimes that is the books we haven’t written, the essays we haven’t crafted, the relationships with colleagues we never strengthened, and the habits we never developed to create and share with vigor.

Likewise, sometimes we don’t do what is required to support the work of writers and artists we admire. We don’t show up to their events, we don’t let them know how much their work meant to us, we don’t take actions to help ensure their work persists.

Earlier this week I saw a Facebook post of a homemade candy store that has operated in a nearby town for 65 years was closing. Of course, there were loads of comments about how sad this was, and they questioned how it could possibly be happening. But then someone posted honestly, “I always wanted to go in here. Never made it.” Then another replied back, “Same here, only passed it a million times.” Preserving what we create and the writing and art that we admire takes effort. And I think that effort is worth it.

So why am I sharing these stories with you, a writer or artist who probably doesn’t live in my town or anywhere near it? It is this…

Support those who create before they are gone. Is there an author whose work you appreciate? Send them a thank you email. Is there a local bookstore you love, but you just don’t get there often enough? Take a trip this week and set the intention to spend a certain amount of money to support them. Is there a local nonprofit in the arts that you admire? Go to their website and see how you can support them, even if it is just showing up for an event or spreading the word.

For your own work, it can be easy to feel that the world has changed, and that the marketplace is now overcrowded; that there is no room for your art to find a place.

But you have a unique voice in the world, and you can create something truly special in your writing and art that will inspire someone. It is a place filled with a sense of safety and potential.

I want your creative vision to persist, and for your writing to reach more people. With that goal in mind, if I could encourage you to take two actions this week, it would be this:

1. Make more time to create, less time to consume or react. Set your own intentions for the week instead of being swayed by scrolling in a feed, the latest trend, or the 1,000th “best practice” you are told you have to do.
2. Make more time to connect with one person this week. Email a fellow writer who you haven’t spoken with in a while. Ask a reader a question. Do something to initiate a new connection. That action is often much simpler than we imagine. A smile. An email. A question. Don’t exhaust yourself vying for more social media followers, instead focus on meaningful connections with the writers, creators, and readers who inspire you.

Create a Support System for Your Creative Work

Too often, when building our creative work, we give up too soon. It’s soooooo easy to feel that we have failed when we have just begun. Often the sense of “failure” comes in the form of silence from others. And it’s so easy in those moments to dim your flame a little bit. To lower your voice. To write… a bit less often. To be more hesitant to share.

Yet we don’t realize how much opportunity still awaits. Even if we are in the midst of cognitive dissonance that says “But I expected something, and it didn’t happen. Isn’t that a sign I should stop?

I encourage you to keep going. Create a support system for your creative work. One that allows you to feel safe to create. This may include a physical space where you are free to explore without judgement, or to write without distraction. And while sometimes that may mean a private writing studio with a door that has a lock on it, more often it is a writer stealing 20 minutes at a cafe to write, or sitting in their car in a parking lot somewhere, finding a brief moment of focus on writing before they head home from work.

Don’t go it alone. Develop colleagues around your creative work — others who strive to create as you do, and who appreciate that aspect of your identity. If no one like this exists in your life now, then seek them out. Sometimes that means showing up to places (online or off) where creators come together. Other times it means just recognizing and supporting those in your life who create work that isn’t exactly like yours — but they believe in just as fervently as you believe in your own creative vision.

Invest in creative maintenance. Work to preserve what you create. Create the habits and systems to ensure that your creative work can persist. Sometimes that means establishing clear boundaries with those around you so that you can feel good about the place that creativity occupies in your life. Other times it means buying a backup hard drive, or simply dusting your writing desk.

Please let me know in the comments: what is one action you can take in the next week to support your own creative vision, or that of someone who inspires you?

For my paid subscribers this week, I shared a video where I discuss lessons from my most popular post ever, with 6 tips for reaching more readers. You can view it here.

Thank you for being here with me.
-Dan

Today I want explore the complicated process of having our creative work — and ourselves — seen. Too often, our writing or art is lost amidst the responsibilities of life. We struggle to find the time to create, and when we do, we face a mix of confusing signals. This has always been best summed up in my favorite episode of the TV show, The Office.

On the show, Pam is a receptionist by day who has been taking art classes. Here she is at her first art show, her paintings thumbtacked to the wall. She stands there, lonely, her work on display for others to accept, reject, or in this case, ignore:

While a lot of friends and colleagues say they will stop by, only one or two actually do. Oscar struggles to find anything positive to say about the art:

They try to be supportive, but it’s been a long day at work, and they have other things on their mind. In this case, Gil criticizes Pam’s art, and she overhears it:

As she comes to the end of the night, she begins taking down her artwork. She was hoping for validation, but received just the opposite:

Then suddenly her boss Michael shows up, apologizing for being late. Look at this image, the artist waiting for the viewer to give feedback:

But then, one of the paintings connects with Michael, he sees something of himself in it:

His expression changes from one who is observing the “other,” an object, to one who is connecting with the art. In this image, Michael and the art are one:

The artist sees this. I mean, just look at her expression:

Michael looks at Pam and says, “I’m really proud of you.”

Out of nowhere, Pam hugs him. Someone sees her as an artist, and connects with her work:

This series of images illustrates so much of the journey that writers and artists go through — the apprehension of sharing your work, of wanting to be seen for what you create, and to have it connect with another human being in a meaningful way.

This reminded me of some stories my friend, artist Megan Carty, has shared with me. I gave her a call this week and asked her about the expectations we can have around having our work seen. Here she is at a recent art show of her work:

When I explained to Megan what I was writing about today, and the example of Pam from The Office, she immediately replied about her own art shows, “Most of them have been like that.” Then she went deep…

For her first solo show back in 2017, she was so excited to finally have her work out there. “I spent months getting the works ready, and pumped it up with Facebook ads. People told me they were coming. The host posted it all over their social media. My husband helped and bought wine from Costco and hors d’oeuvres. Someone told me to get a guestbook, so I did that, and had cards printed to hand out.”

She expected a crowd because so many people told her they were coming. She continues…

“Then the day came. My dad came down from Maine, which was very nice. Then a guy I went to high school with came up from Rhode Island. A friend of mine from my hometown was passing through, so she stopped in briefly. And that was it. A total of the 3 people one of them being my dad. It was crickets.”

“When I was loading up my car that night, I felt humiliated and embarrassed and rejected and dejected. My husband felt so bad for me, he watched me for six months put this work together for my first solo exhibition.”

Anyone who has ever tried to share what they create knows this feeling. But then, something special happened…

“When we were leaving , my dad gave me a big hug, and he whispered in my ear, ‘This is just the beginning. It may not be the beginning you imagined, but I’m proud of you.”

Then Megan talked about what she learned from this event and others like it:

“But it went on my resume as something I did. The woman who installed the work there loved it, and ended up buying an original from me. She also ended up licensing some prints. So it built the relationship with her that came from it. She kept saying ‘We should do another show with your new work.’”

“I had to really work on the mindset that this doesn’t mean me and my work are not valuable. It just means that people are busy and have their own plan. I need to be at the right place and the right time. A lot of it is luck and timing and you only create that by showing up, taking the risk over and over, and get back up when knocked down. It’s not about you personally.”

A couple years back, I wrote about a similar situation that author Stacy McAnultyfaced. She had recently published her 29th book, and organized a book event as a trivia night for her young readers at a bookstore. She said, “I was determined to make it work. I sent 160 letters to local educators—every science and English middle school teacher in the county. (Not the cheapest way to communicate. Stamps are $$$) This wasn’t just a reading. It was fun trivia that I spent hours creating. I also had prizes and snacks.”

Well, the result was what authors have nightmares about. This is the crowd 10 minutes after the event started:

But then…

A reader showed up!

Stacy shares:

“At about 4:15, a young reader came in with his mom and sister. He was clutching a worn copy of [my book] The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl. He said that he loved my books. His mom bought him the new book as a birthday gift. The three of them played trivia with me. They got all the prizes and snacks. We had a BLAST! His mom told me he begged to come. She was late because she had to drive carpool and she also had a meeting later in the evening. She almost said no, but her son begged. After it was over, the bookseller said that I made that reader’s day. Maybe but he certainly made mine. To show my appreciation, I bought him a copy of [my book] Millionaires for the Month, as a birthday present.”

How did this moment happen? Well, remember all those letters that Stacy sent out? She says, “I asked the young reader how he knew about this event. (The family didn’t come to downtown Winston-Salem often, and I think it was his first time at the store.) He said his Language Arts teacher told him. He had the letter and swag I’d sent to educators. The teacher connected us.”

So I ask you: was this worth it? Worth it for Stacy to impact the life of one reader with all this effort? I think so.

For what you create and for how you share it with the world, I encourage you to:

• Keep creating.
• Focus on your unique voice.
• Don’t wait to share until you feel everything is ‘perfect.’ Start this process of learning early.
• Recognize and engage the people in front of you who show up.
• Challenge your assumptions about what works.
• Try new things.

For my paid subscribers this week I shared a video on what to do if finding your readers feels impossible. It talks about the exhaustion of always seeking — but never finding — your ideal readers. You can see a preview and become a paid subscriber here.

Thank you for being here with me.
-Dan

Today I want to talk about your next act. Maybe it is a second act, or a third, or even a fourth. What I mean by this is how you will sustain who you are as a writer or artist, and how your creative work will continue. That could be a reinvention as well, a new chance to experience who you are and what you are capable of creating after you have already lived one version of your life.

My Substack is called “The Creative Shift” for this reason.

I work with writers and creators, and my days are immersed in not just creating our work, but creating who we are. It is filled with invention and reinvention.

But I feel something special happens when you do show up to create and share. When what you create connects with someone who desperately needs it. You — and you alone — can become a bright spot in someone’s day, inspiring them, giving them hope, educating them, and making them feel seen and a part of something.

You are unique in this world, and the world needs your voice. Today I want to explore your next act and how you can make your creative work sustainable over time.

Your Next Act Can Be Your Best

But there is this one video of him that I always go back to. The context here matters. In 1985 he was kicked out of Apple, an embarrassing and humbling move for him. Over the course of the decade that followed, he was largely out of the limelight he had previously enjoyed. He started a new computer company (called NeXT) and financially supported a small group of digital animators in a little known company at the time called The Graphics Group. (More on them in a bit…)

Steve seemed to change a lot in that decade, and there is a single moment when you can see this. In 1997 Apple was struggling, in danger of bankruptcy, having long since lost the personal computer battle to others. From Wikipedia: “Apple’s market share declined precipitously from 9.4% in 1993 to 3.1% in 1997.” Yikes.

Tentatively, Apple brought Steve back in as an advisor. I followed this closely at the time, and remember how skeptical people were that Steve was just a marketing charlatan who would bring drama, not a solid business growth strategy.

At one of their big conferences for developers, Steve took the stage and did a Q&A session. An audience member asked Steve a difficult — and insulting — question:

“Mr. Jobs, you are a bright and influential man. It’s sad and clear that on several counts you’ve discussed, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I would like for you to express in clear terms how, say, Java in any of its incarnations addresses the ideas embodied in Open Doc. And when you are finished with that, perhaps you can tell us what you personally have been doing for the last seven years.”

Now, you don’t need to know what “Java” or “Open Doc” is. Here is Steve being verbally attacked in front of hundreds of the most important people in Apple’s community, his very intellect and leadership ability being questioned, just as he is re-emerging in the company he desperately wants to lead again.

This is what happened next…

Steve sits down in silence. He has a passive demeanor, which is surprising when considering his reputation for confrontation with others.

He takes a big drink of water. Clearly, this buys him some time, but it also prepares for a lengthy answer. He looks down, contemplating, his shoulders slumped. Again, what I see here is passivity and relaxation as he considers this. Before he says a word, 10 seconds elapse. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you have ever been on stage in front of a large audience, you know that 10 seconds of silence can feel like an hour.

Steve casually says, “You know, you can please some of the people, some of the time…” To me he is still buying time as he considers his response. He is now looking down at his water bottle, and a total of 25 seconds elapses before he begins to respond. That is a huge amount of time on stage. Imagine if I asked you to wait 25 seconds before you read the next sentence. Now imagine hundreds of people watching you as you wait. It’s a lot of pressure.

He finally replies, “One of the hardest things when you are trying to affect change is that, people like this gentleman, are RIGHT! In some areas.” He validates the person asking the question, which is a counterintuitive response.

He sets down his water bottle, and becomes animated. He’s calm, he calls the questioner a gentleman, and he starts by focusing on his mission, which he defines as “affecting change.”

Steve never disagrees with the person, he never gets defensive. Instead, he goes further to say there is a lot he doesn’t know and will get wrong, and he brings the audience into his vision and his process.

He stands up and begins walking around the stage — now in his element. “How does that fit into to a cohesive larger vision?” He asks about that specific technology in question.

Steve then charts a path through where they all want to go: to have Apple return to success. Along the way, he poses challenges they will face, saying, “I’ve made this mistake probably more than anyone else in this room.”

Then instead of debating, he focuses on the journey, saying, “As we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple…”

Steve is not just answering the question, he is presenting an ethos to a skeptical audience who is tired of seeing Apple flailing, and whose careers depend on Apple’s success. They are concerned about Steve coming back and being the final nail in the coffin. I mean, this is the expression of the audience Steve is looking out on:

The irony of how the person who ended his question with “Perhaps you can tell us what you personally have been doing for the last seven years?” is that it was a slow buildup to dramatic success.

That small animation company Steve funded changed its name to Pixar. It never would have survived to release its first movie or any movie beyond that without his support. For years, he kept pouring money into it, even when it had little hope of success.

His computer startup, NeXT, was soon purchased by Apple and fully integrated its technology into its computers and became the foundation for their new operating system.

Steve described the years after this moment on stage as the most creative and productive period of his life. It was also one of the biggest string of successes of any company ever, where Apple released the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and so much else to become the most valuable company in the world.

Of course, you may have mixed feelings about Steve, or Apple, or the impact of their products. But I think of that moment when someone was trying to create their next act, and was challenged. And they responded with a vision instead of a debate.

What are lessons that you can pull from this as you try to find sustainability for what you create? As you consider your next act? A few things to consider:

• Slow down. Change the pace of the moment, even if that is uncomfortable at first. So often, we feel pressure to match the pacing of others, but that often works against your own goals. Take the time you need to consider and respond in a way that honors your intentions. This has the benefit of changing the air in the room, and finding opportunities for connection.
• Have empathy for others. Steve didn’t demonize the person asking the question, and he easily could have from his perch on the stage. Instead, he called him a “gentleman,” agreed with him, and even apologized in his answer. But he didn’t waiver from his goal. You can be humble and empathetic, while also staying on your path.
• Focus on core principles first. Instead of focusing on the specifics of the technology, rewind to the deeper ethos and goals driving you. Explain this again, because so often we assume everyone is on the same page when they aren’t. This gives you a shared starting point where people become more open minded to understand your viewpoint and process.
• Own up to your own blind spots, failures, ignorance, and bad decisions. It’s fascinating how often Steve did this in his response, yet at no point did it feel like he was defensive or “weak.” You can 100% own up to these things, just don’t make them the end of the conversation.
• Take people through the shared journey you are on. Explain what you are hoping to achieve and why, and how that informs the exact process you are encouraging.
  Steve did this in phrases such as, “We have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple…” and “I think that is the right path to take.” He framed this as a path, something they are exploring, not a stark decision where one option is “right” and the other is “wrong.” And certainly not, “I’m right, and you are wrong.” He even says, “Some mistakes will be made along the way,” indicating the distinct nature of a journey rather than a decision.
• Highlight the people in the process. During his answer, Steve highlighted members of the team by name, and talked about how incredibly hard they were working. He asks the audience to support his team, even if they are skeptical of Steve himself.
• Ignore that which takes you off course. Steve ignored the final part of the person’s question, never addressing what he had been doing for the past 7 years. Instead, he stayed focused on why he and everyone else was in that room: to chart a good path for Apple and each of their own goals as developers.

I know you are busy. You want your creativity to feel sustainable, and to be able to share your work with readers in a meaningful way. So on a practical everyday level here are a couple things I recommend you focus on for your next act:

Do Less.

Do one thing really well. Be the person most passionate or curious about that topic or theme. You don’t need fancy credentials — in fact, your “credential” is how well you explore this theme.

Stop stretching yourself so thin trying to do it all. Focus on what matters most to you, and double down on that. Not only will you feel better, you will be able to find more energy and time to devote to it, instead of spreading that out across so many other places.

Now, I absolutely know that the amount of resources we are talking about here is a sliver of your total energy and time. Likely 95% of your week is focused on other responsibilities — family, career, health, etc. But for that other 5% that could include what you create and how you share, how can you make it really count? My advice: do less. Use all of that 5% on one thing that really matters in creating and ensuring it connects with someone.

Own Your Channels.

Invest in channels that you have more ownership in. What I tend to recommend most is an email newsletter. I happen to prefer Substack, but I’ve worked with many services over the years.

Social media can give you “easy” likes and help you feel as though you are part of the crowd. But the moment you leave that one social network, your connection to them is gone. Everything you created there is gone as well. It’s not uncommon for me to hear from a writer or artist who found themselves locked out a social media account they spent years developing, with no recourse to get it back.

With a newsletter, you can keep your access to your subscribers across platforms.

A Final Act

Five months before Steve died at age 56, he showed up at a city council meeting in the city Apple is based. While he didn’t have to, he wanted to personally share the plans that he had been working on to create a new campus for Apple employees.

Steve is incredibly thin, and he has undergone cancer treatments for years. Yet here he is, in the same black mock turtleneck, pitching one last creative vision he feels passionate about.

This is another video I have watched many times as I consider why we create and why sharing that with others really matters.

Please let me know in the comments: how would you define your next act? What goals would you have, or what changes would you like to make to ensure your creative work feels sustainable?

For my paid subscribers this week I shared a video on how AI is changing the creative process. You can see a preview here.

Thank you for being here with me.
-Dan

I grew up as an artist, taking lessons in Mrs. Flannigan’s basement starting at age 5. My friends have always been creators, and my wife is an amazing artist. For decades, I have worked with writers, helping ensure they create and share their work, connecting with readers.

As I see AI-generated writing and images become more mainstream, I’ve been questioning:

1. How is AI going to help people create?
2. Where will it destroy our ability to create, diminish the value of what we create, and change our identity as writers and artists?

Today I want to do a deep dive using some specific examples of the intersection of AI and creativity.

Something I’m considering is this: AI is clearly being integrated into nearly all digital tools already. Will AI simply become a natural part of a much larger process, or will AI become the process itself? And in that situation, does the writer and artist lose their identity?

There is a rush to integrate AI into the fabric of our lives, and soon it will simply be more convenient to use it than not. It may quickly get to a point where it will feel like you are hurting your own aspirations and needs by not using it.

As I explore this today, I think a point I am making is this: don’t lose your unique creative voice to AI. That is probably easy at the moment, because you may not be an early adopter to AI tools. But as they become more useful and compelling, we may even become unaware of how AI is not only becoming a part of the creative process, it becomes the entirety of the creative process.

The results may skew our own perceptions around creativity, what is real, and who we are as writers and artists. I’ll try to keep this conversation very practical though, so let’s dig in…

How Will AI Change Our Identity?

Not long ago, my friend Melinda Wenner Moyer sent me a text saying that on a whim she had “AI headshots” done. What is that? Well, you upload a series of photos of yourself, and then for around $50, an AI service will deliver back to you a whole bunch of brand new professional looking headshots. Can you tell me which of these images are actual photos of Melinda, and which were generated by AI?

Difficult to tell, isn’t it? I imagine you are looking for one tell-tale sign. But if I didn’t tell you that two of these are AI generated, would you even question it for a moment? Each look like Melinda and have convincing levels of detail. (Note: I desaturated the images and added noise to some of them to ensure they all generally had the same tone.) Of the images above, it is: AI, real, AI, real.

She and I discussed the ethical considerations of using them, and each of us immediately felt it would be potentially problematic.

In the “pro” column for using AI headshots, I could see many compelling reasons for someone to use them. Instead of scheduling a photoshoot, taking off a few hours, selecting outfits, hoping you have a good hair day, spending hundreds of dollars, and waiting weeks for results… you could have them nearly instantly with barely any effort. For Melinda, the AI headshot app gave her dozens of options, all were very convincing, and each in a different outfit/setting, here is a small sampling:

I could easily see how she could find one that she likes, and then generate more versions of that one to get the exact right expression or photo. All this, while making very little effort.

Compare this to an actual photoshoot she did about four years ago. From what I can tell from the numbers on the images, the photographer she hired clicked the shutter button more than 400 times during that session. Melinda did 3 outfit changes, and more than 60 photos were delivered to her for review. Of those, she ended up choosing 3 or 4 that she eventually used publicly. All of this cost around $400.

Since this was so time consuming to create, if Melinda liked a certain “look” from this batch, but not her expression, she may have to compromise on the final photo she uses.

Each year my family hires a photographer for holiday cards, and if I’m honest, it always feels like a hassle. We have to remember to book a session in August before they sell out. We have to keep a Saturday morning clear in October when the kids are both super busy with other activities. We have to get the “perfect” outfits, try to coax the little one to be happy but not off-the-wall, serious but not dour. And then… we wait for two weeks and hope that one of the photos captures us all — just right — in the same split second.

It’s so easy to say, “I prefer real, I won’t use AI.” But I have been surrounded by writers and artists my whole life, and it’s common to see someone try 40 or 80 or 120 photos of themselves or their art, and still feel like they haven’t gotten it right. What if you could just instantly get 50 perfect images to choose from? Then in another instant, get 50 more versions of the one photo you liked best from that initial batch.

What could be lost as a process like this — using AI for photos of ourselves — becomes more mainstream? It will be less viable for someone to be a professional photographer. Yes, of course, some still will, thriving in niche markets in the same way that vinyl records and film cameras are still created. But they are each a small fraction of the marketshare they once had.

Likewise, our own skills may diminish. When we take photos, we learn about framing, lighting, and so many nuances of the skill of photography. When we are simply given dozens of perfect photos to choose from, we lose out on that learning.

I can envision this in the not too distant future: someone creates AI images of themselves that they love, and then a year later, feed those AI images back into the AI for updated versions. Then a year later, do it again. To the point where it is an AI-generated copy of a copy of a copy of how you looked 12 years ago.

Am I imagining a dystopian future? That’s not my goal. Honestly, I’m trying to think of this on very practical terms. With AI, what will be real when it comes to our own identity? When it will be too tempting to use AI. I was on LinkedIn the other day, and it made a compelling offer: that if I allow its AI to rewrite my status update, it may receive 35% more distribution and 35% more engagement. Wouldn’t I be foolish not to see how it can improve my post to give me so much more reach?

I’m envisioning our reliance on AI to be similar in a very practical, humdrum, everyday kind of way.

How Will AI Change Our Voice?

If you are unfamiliar with Adam, he is an author who tends to share short posts on X that explains a complicated topic in a brief — often counterintuitive — way. Here is a recent one from Adam where he explains the difference between shyness and introversion, and how to avoid each:

I asked ChatGPT to create something similar, and purposefully did NOT ask it to write in “Adam Grant style” so that it (hopefully) wouldn’t copy any of his material, or otherwise benefit from his writing without compensation to him.

The first attempt:

Maybe you think that is good, maybe you think it is horrible. But what becomes interesting is the next prompt:

This took milliseconds to create. Are some of these kinda weird? Yep. Could I easily see some of these passing for compelling social media updates, especially if paired with an authentic selfie? I think so. And this was with the most minimal effort on my part. If I spent even 15 minutes honing this process, the results would be much better.

Of course, this underscores the power of an author’s platform, that people follow Adam because they trust him. That trust took years to develop.

Yet the question that started this piece remains for me: will AI not be part of the creative process, but become the creative process? I can see someone using AI as part of their process to help explore an idea and craft social media posts. But what happens when one person decides to create 100 “Adam Grant style” social media profiles, and pumps out thousands of these a day? Or when one’s work becomes “infected” with all of this AI-created material that they have no real research on or authority about? That little by little, they have no unique voice other than the voice of the AI?

I recently saw a Facebook post from Joe Illidge that really got me thinking:

I feel like he was underscoring that if an artist doesn’t document every step of their creative process, they may be falsely accused of using AI, with the insinuation that the use of AI is theft or unethical. And that this artist’s career may be badly damaged very quickly without convincing proof otherwise. Some in the comments of that post described how this was already happening to some creators.

It’s a fascinating situation to consider — one where writers and artists must create from a defensive posture. How is a creators voice changed in this process?

Will We Even Be Able to See AI Anymore?

But here’s the thing: filmmaker James Cameron just rereleased Aliens, and in making it the best representation for the film on modern TVs, he used AI to remove film grain and enhance the visuals. This has been highly controversial in the film community. I’ve watched some YouTube videos of people showing still shots from the film before and after the AI has been applied, and it’s compelling (new version is on the left):

But I wanted to watch the film as an average moviegoer, not an analyst. The result? Honestly, the film looks like it was shot this year. It looks modern in terms of level of detail, lighting, clarity, etc.

And this had me considering: will we be able to even notice AI anymore once it is woven into the fabric of all that we see?

Our Analog Future

I am drawn to creators who eschew modern technology, instead devoting themselves largely to analog tools One of those people is a musician named Sam Battle, who goes by the moniker “Look Mum No Computer.” This recent video best sums up his unique talent. While performing a live show, he asks for requests, and on the spot he creates a cover version of the Blur song titled “Song 2:”

This is astounding to me. Here he is on his custom made synthesizer, crafting songs live, singing, and engaging directly with the audience.

His stage name is meant to highlight that unlike most music recorded nowadays, he isn’t recording into a computer, and then manipulating the sound from there.

Here is someone focused on the tools you can see and touch, with hundreds of dials he can adjust on stage. He is showing up live in front of the audience, and walking that edge of asking for cover songs he has never played before.

This is where I tend to feel inspired. Art thrives when it has clear boundaries and limits. That always enhances the work because the artist is forced to do something new within those confines.

When I hear of Jack White not allowing mobile phones at his concerts, and when the Broadway show I went to didn’t allow phones out during the performance, I kind of love it. It forces us to simply be present and realize that less is indeed more. And that when our attention is focused, creativity thrives.

To answer the original question, will AI be a part of the creative process, or become the process itself? I feel we each get to decide for ourselves. And all I ask is that you make these decisions consciously and with intention.

Please let me know in the comments: how do you see AI impacting how you create, or the creative field you are in?

For my paid subscribers this week I shared a video on how to measure success beyond subscriber & follower growth. You can see a preview here.

Thank you for being here with me.

-Dan