Lately, I’ve been a little obsessed with the Hilda comics series by Luke Pearson. Visually, the comics and the Netflix TV series are stunning, mainly for the beautifully controlled colour palettes they use.

To bake sourdough bread, you need four ingredients: Flour, Water, Culture, and Time. Time is as important to sourdough bread as the things you can feel and weigh. And if you want some fresh bread in the morning, you’ve got to plan for it, you’ve got to be preparing things a day or two in advance.

There are times when I’m struggling to really nail an idea. I might have a character design or colour palette in my head and I sit down to work and work and work until what I see in my head is on the page. I know I can do it, but some days are just harder than others. I think things like, “If I just put in another hour, I’ll have it.” But frustration builds, I almost always never get there.

Just add time

Now, I’ve learned to identify that feeling of ‘pushing through’ early. And when I start to think those controlling thoughts, I do the opposite; I walk away.

Like baking great sourdough, great ideas need time. They require patience and a generosity to yourself. A trust that, in time, you can do it, but it doesn’t need to be right now. Maybe you need a bit more practice. Or maybe you have to sleep on it and look at it with fresh eyes. Maybe you need to an additional flash of inspiration that puts you on the right track or gives you a renewed motivation to finish. In a world where we’re told that we can control everything, giving ourselves over to time is hard. In my experience, it’s always worth it.

I hear that children’s publishing is a difficult industry to break in to. There’s a lot of people wanting in, and only so many books a year. So what are the chances that you’re going to be the one? Slim to none, I hear. They say it probably won’t be you.

So prove them wrong, underdog.

From underdog to top dog

It turns out that being an underdog can be incredibly motivating for some people. The mission to ’cause an upset’ might be the thing you need to push you to work smarter and harder than anyone else. I’m one of these people. I like to challenge the status quo. If someone tells me that it’s unlikely I’ll be able to achieve something, I will go out of my way to prove them wrong if it’s something I care about.

There are so many examples of this. From the story of Brad Bird and the Incredibles, to ‘now top-dog’ of the anime world and founder of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki, who, whilst a lowly in-betweener at one of his first jobs, decided to re-draw the entire ending to a film without having the permission to do so. Jules Faber, and Brian Koppelman’s Podcast, The Moment, also mounts evidence for the case.

A ‘just-manageable’ difficulty

It’s all well and good to say, “Hey, people don’t think you’ll ever be published. So go. Get published”. But that’s a bit like saying “Hey, you’re not smart, be smarter.” Or for those of us familiar with The Simpsons, Tappa Tappa Tappa. This is where ‘A just manageable difficulty” becomes important.

“Being published” is a pretty difficult thing, especially when they say, “You’ll never be published”. There’s a lot that needs to happen for someone to achieve that goal. But what about doing 3 illustrations per week. I bet you can’t do that. Or, if you’re already doing that, what about an illustration a day. An idea a day? 300 words per day? Go on, I dare you.

A just manageable difficulty is about setting a challenge whose difficulty doesn’t feel impossible, but it stretches you. Right now, my just-manageable difficulty is writing one journal entry per week. On the surface, this doesn’t sound like much. But with a full-time job, a fair-sized garden that needs care, in-progress and exploratory picture book work, short story writing and reading for pleasure, plus, you know, life; one journal entry is proving just manageable. I’ve also been told I couldn’t keep it up. I’ll show them.

Find your rival and conquer

So, next time someone says, “No, sorry, this path is not for you.” Embrace that the odds are against you, that they’re expecting you to fail. Then, set your small but manageable goals and prove them wrong, one small win at a time.

In the not too distant future, ballet, music, and sport will be performed perfectly by robots. Every position and every movement choreographed with a precision that a human could never possibly achieve in their lifetime. A robot performer will never fall. They will never be out of sync; never go out-of-bounds. Every jump, catch and note as fluid and majestic as can be.

Boring, huh?

Humans watch other humans strive to do things perfectly because it’s rare that it will ever be perfect. Even the most awarded, respected, consistently performing master of their craft will, on occasion, have an off day. A prima ballerina may tumble. A football player will miss a penalty kick sometimes. A musician will miss a note in their performance of The Flight of the Bumblebee. These are the moments we tell our friends about after it’s over, “Did you see her fall? Did you see him miss that catch? Can you believe it?!”

Failure, in the pursuit of perfection, is exciting to onlookers. Often, the bits that I dislike most about a painting that I complete are the bits that draw the most interest from the observer. It reveals a chink in the armour. The vulnerability they notice reminds them that they aren’t alone–that we’re flawed. That, in the long run, we’ll never attain ‘perfect’. But that doesn’t mean we won’t stop trying. When the risk is gone, so is the anticipation and excitement of the reward.

How do I know when I’ve made it? I recently attended the SCBWI conference in Sydney with almost 400 other writers and/or illustrators. Most of the attendees were unpublished, and of the ones I spoke to, most of them asked what I was doing there, because I was already published. What did I need to learn?

As it turns out, we’re all working at different scales of success. In one view, there’s the ‘beginner to pro’ scale. It looks something like this:

At the SCBWI conference, I was seen as the ‘pro’ by all the ‘beginners’. That’s because of the scale that unpublished authors use in their head to categorise things. I think what they really see is this:

But in my head, that scale it’s vastly different. It’s not whether I’m published or unpublished. No. I’m playing the long game. An infinite game of art. I’m competing against myself and my own ability. Because of this, my scale looks something like this:

See, for me, success is about making my body use the tools of my medium to render my imagination and communicate my ideas as clearly and accurately as possible. It doesn’t matter whether people choose to stop publishing the work I do, I’ll still keep making it. After all, it’s how I started. I was once unpublished, like the other attendees at that conference. In fact, this might sound strange, but the goal of getting published never entered my head at all. I was simply trying to make the work I could see in my brain. I still am. I’ll never stop attending conferences, talks, and workshops. I’ll never stop reading, studying light, analysing the craft of writing poetry and fiction. It’s a lifelong pursuit. And, if people one day choose to no longer publish that work in a book, that’s OK. I’ll keep trying my hardest to move that arrow in my head to the right, knowing full well that I’ll never get there because no matter what I do, my expectation of what I can do will always exceed the skill I have to reach it.

If a casual home cook and a chef had just four ingredients: Bread, Cheese, Tomato and Butter, who would make the better toasted sandwich?

Simplicity and Expertise

Have you ever noticed that masters of their profession are always talking about how to make things simpler? The most accomplished chefs talk about using simple ingredients. Letting the ingredients do the work. Some of the best in the world use a single knife for everything. A chef’s skill isn’t in the ability to source the most ingredients, or the weirdest ones. A chef’s skill is in their deep understanding of the ingredients at their disposal and the ways to successfully combine them to produce the most vivid culinary experience possible.

The act of writing (and the use of language) is no different.

People often assume that writing a children’s book is easy. They mistake word count for effort and complexity. I’ve been asked many times whether I “*just* write for children” or do I write for adults, too? As if writing for children is an easier or lesser practice. What people don’t realise is that children’s book are, in fact, one of the hardest things to write (probably only second to poetry). A children’s book writer needs to paint the most vivid pictures with the least number of words. This means, like expert chefs, they need to have a deep understanding of the basic ingredients so they can combine them in the most effective ways. The ingredients they have to work with aren’t just the words. Yes, a large vocabulary is useful. But an expert writer of children’s books also needs to understand story structure, grammar, poetic forms, meter, and rhyme to name a few. There is a depth to these concepts that take a lifetime or more to hone.

Less can be more

In the absence of the deep knowledge of the ingredients one is working with, whether that be cooking or writing, it’s easy to try and compensate by adding more. Maybe the home cook adds relish to their sandwich? Maybe the emerging writer adds adverbs to their writing?

Over time, as you write over and over and over again and learn from your daily practice, you learn more about the basic ingredients and discover that the relish is just getting in the way. It’s hiding the natural, beautiful flavour of your core ingredients. That’s the beauty of putting the effort in and part of the reason I’m addicted to this pursuit of less.

I want the books that I put into the world to be things that I believe in. Messages that I believe are important. I want to spend my time creating books that have longevity in the lives of kids and adults. I want this criteria to be the key motivating force that drives me to decide whether or not I write a book, or illustrate someone else’s text. I think that making sure I don’t rely on my art for income is really important.

Freedom and Choice

I acknowledge that I’m one of the lucky ones. I have a day job that I really like. As a software designer, I get to work with a group of smart, diverse, and creative thinkers who are all motivated to make things better for people. The conversations I have with this amazing group of people have been hugely influential for shaping my view of the world, which in turn influences the stories I write and the art that I make. My job is in software, an in-demand industry that, let’s be honest, pays pretty well. The company I work for, Cogent, has flexible working hours and is fully supportive of its employees having other interests outside of the company mission. As I said, I’m pretty bloody lucky.

Having this level of flexibility, autonomy, and salary, means I’m free to explore the world of writing and illustration without being dependent on it for making a living. If the illustration jobs dry up, that’s OK. If I come across an offer to do a book about bums or poo, I can say no (although the little child in me will still giggle and probably want to give it a shot). I don’t need to chase a project because next month’s rent is due. It means that I can make choices driven by what means most to me, my values.

Is your day job actually good for your art?

I know many artists are striving to make more time for their art. They’re working day jobs in service of the creative work they’re trying to achieve on nights and weekends. Some of them dream of making a living from it someday. A vision of finally submitting that resignation letter to a manager they’ve tolerated but never liked. But sometimes, it’s worth thinking about whether that ‘dream’ is truly what we imagine it to be. Whether the yin and yang of ‘day job’ and ‘art’ actually work in service of one another. Perhaps the frustration you face in your day job is a source of energy in your creative work. A way to ‘rebel’ against the day’s events. That’s how it started for me. I found watercolour when I was searching for a way to spend more time away from the computer screen.

I often think, what would happen if I worked as a full-time illustrator? Would I miss the conversations and people I love to spend time with at work? Probably. Would I crave to return to some software-related hobby? Who knows? What happens when I’m forced to paint things I don’t necessarily enjoy painting because I need to pay the bills this month. Yikes, that sounds depressing.

See, maybe the answer isn’t leaving my day job and doing art full-time. Maybe there’s room for both in my life, and it’s better that way. Maybe it’s the same for you?

Talent. It’s a pretty powerful word. If you have talent, then that’s great. What a lucky person you are – to be so talented at something! We speak of talented people as a different class of person. It’s synonymous with being gifted or special in some way. A gift is something you didn’t earn, but something that someone bestowed upon you. Something you were just lucky to acquire when some higher power was giving out gifts.

But, what does it mean then, if you’re not talented? If you got the short end of the stick when gifts were being handed out? Instead, you got coal in your stocking and the knowledge that, well, you were never destined for anything special. Not in this life anyway. No point trying anymore, I suppose.

Talent is a load of crap

Me? I’m lucky. I’m talented, people say. I’m so fortunate, people say. I’m different. Special. Not everyone can do what I can do, people say.

But what most people don’t know is how hard I work to do what I do. I think ‘talent’ is a load of crap. I think we’ve invented talent as a catch-all to give ourselves an excuse to stop pursuing things when they get a little harder than what we think they should be. Calling someone else ‘talented’ gives us a way out.

Talent equals strengths plus hard work

It’s widely acknowledged, at least in most literature on humanity, that every person on the planet comes with strengths and weaknesses. Some things we’re naturally good at, and others, well they require a bit more hard work if we want to improve them.

I’m comfortable with saying that one of my strengths is empathy. From very young, I’ve always had very high empathy. I’ve also got a heightened visual perception compared to other people who I’ve met in my life. I distinguish colours with a higher level of granularity than most people, and I notice shapes and colours that other people don’t seem to notice. It’s always been this way for me. I didn’t know it was a strength until I met people for whom this was a weakness.

When I frame my strengths like this, no one says, “You’re so talented at empathy,” or “You have a talent for noticing fine colour differences in everyday objects.” The ‘talent’ lies in art, music, sculpture. Creative pursuits that require a hell of a lot of… you guessed it, hard work.

As we learn in school, your strengths alone will only get you so far. Unless they’re honed (from advice from teachers, friends and others), and we put in the hours of practice to hone them, strengths, well, don’t do very much all by themselves.

But.

If we decide to work hard to refine our strengths, those strengths become SO strong that when they’re seen by others for whom it’s their weakness, it feels like something different to them. Something, how should I say, unattainable? And when something enters the realm of unattainable, we need a new word for that. Gift is one. Special is another. I’ve heard ‘blessed’, too, if they’re religious. And then there’s Talented.

Make yourself talented

So, how do you make yourself talented at something? Well, the first step is to know yourself. What are you good at? What do you generally do slightly better than anyone else without seeming to have to work at it? In my case, it’s empathy (which is also a weakness by the way but I can talk about that later). My visual perception is another strength.

Once you’ve identified your strength/s, then you have to work your butt off to turn them into something that is out of this world. Practice relentlessly and consume as much knowledge from books, mentors, classes or short courses as your body and mind can sustainably consume. ‘Sustainably’ is key here, burning yourself out won’t get you very far.

How you hone your strengths isn’t easy (in fact, it’s actually the hard part), but it’s the part that turns strength into a ‘talent’. It’s the part that tricks people into believing that they simply can’t do this superhuman thing that you seem to pull off so effortlessly.

There’s this concept in improv theatre, a rule of thumb; it’s called ‘Yes, and’ thinking. The purpose of ‘Yes, and’ is to accept someone’s line of thinking (the ‘yes’ bit) and then build upon it (the ‘and’ bit). When you experience a really incredible improvised theatre performance, it’s often (at least partly) because the actors are using ‘yes, and.’

In improv theatre, you don’t know where the story is going to go. It’s not something that’s planned to the nth degree. There’s no script, no storyboard. It’s what makes it so fun. It always starts with a question, or a statement or a scenario, but where it goes from there is up to the actors. “Yes, and” encourages growth and play. It embraces the uncertainty not as a thing to be challenged or removed, but an advantage or a feature of the format. It removes early judgement. It’s what separates it from non-improvised theatre.

Consider this scenario. Two actors, one playing a patient, the other playing a doctor.

PATIENT ENTERS DOCTOR’S OFFICE.

Patient: Doctor Doctor! Please help me! I’ve swallowed a sparrow and now whenever I speak, I can’t help but cheep. CHEEP!

In a “yes, and” environment, the Doctor now builds upon that idea.

Doctor: Oh my goodness, a sparrow! I’ve seen this before. Do you have an uncontrollable craving to eat worms or seeds yet?!

Can you see the ‘Yes, and’ here? The doctor acknowledges the situation, “A sparrow!”, and then builds upon it using their role as a doctor. A doctor normally diagnoses by enquiry of symptoms, so they think, ‘well, what other symptoms might there be if a person ate a sparrow’.

The actor playing the patient had no idea where the story was going when they setup this zany scenario, but with some simple “yes, and” thinking, the story has moved on, it’s become immediately more interesting. No one owns it now. The Doctor didn’t say, “No, but that’s just stupid! Whoever heard of such a ridiculous thing.” There’s no judgement. That can come later. And now, with this idea of worms and seeds, it’s up to the patient to apply their own ‘yes, and’ to expand on it.

Patient: Oh my goodness Doctor, Yes! I do have an unusual craving for seeds. And sometimes, when I burp, feathers come out.

… and so the story evolves.

Like in improv theatre, picture books always start with a scenario or an idea. A protagonist is in an environment where there’s some sort of conflict to overcome. Some authors are more prescriptive than others, but the best picture books texts are loose and open. There’s a space in them. Room to move. They offer a scenario, and invite the illustrator to respond. The parallel between our patient and doctor scenario is clear.

When you pick up a picture book, the relationship between author and illustrator is evident most of the time. There’s a stiffness to the work when the illustrator just ‘illuminated someone else’s vision’. But if both actors have contributed equally to evolve the story, or the character, or the environment, whatever aspect of the book that really makes it sing, the whole thing feels unified. As a reader, you get lost in that world and, well, that’s just the magic of books, isn’t it?

One of the great joys of working on picture books, like improv, is the uncertainty. Not having all the answers up front. The possibility of getting to a point where the final story has evolved in to something neither of you could have come up with on your own.

How do you win at Art? More followers than other artists? More sales? Better reviews from critics or audiences?

In 1986, James P Carse published a book called “Finite and Infinite Games. A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility.” In it, he describes two types of games.

“THERE ARE at least two kinds of games. One could be called
finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. ”

Finite games require rules that everyone agrees on. It comes to a definitive end. There’s a prize to play for. Someone wins the game when all other players agree that that person has won. The most obvious example of finite games is sports. In baseball, football, ice hockey, you name it, there’s a trophy that all teams are striving to ‘win’. In baseball, there are 11 innings and everyone playing the game knows that the team with the most runs after 11 innings wins. There are other rules, of course, all described in a rule book, that everyone has access too, so they all know how to play. Finite games are simple. You play, within some boundaries, to win.

Infinite games, on the other hand, are as the name suggests, without end. People play infinite games merely to play the game. Infinite games may or may not have rules. If they have rules, those rules aren’t fixed, like in a finite game. A mother doesn’t play ‘forts’ with her daughter to ‘win’ at forts; they play because they enjoy the playing. Forts end when either player stops enjoying the game.

I can’t help but think that art shares similarities with infinite games. Artists (mostly) aren’t competing for a common ‘trophy’. What success means for one artist is not the same as for another. Every artist is bound by different rules, too. These might be mediums one works in. Or the time in which they give themselves to make their art as they balance other life commitments. And maybe the subjects which capture their heart and attention are different. Art ‘ends’ either when the artist themselves make the decision to stop making art, or, well, the artist dies.

In our ever competitive, capitalist society, we’re encouraged to follow our ‘side hustle’, to ‘follow your passion’ and ‘live your dreams’. But, it’s important to be clear on whether you’re playing an infinite game with your art, or a finite one. If you’re playing the infinite game, then followers, likes, sales and reviews don’t mean anything. They aren’t the rules if you don’t want them to be. You play so you can keep playing, maybe that’s the point.