“How Are You Going to Hold Your Purpose In Front of You?”
A Reflection on Why I’m Really Writing My Book
Speaking with my coach last night, he asked what the very essential, core purpose is for writing my book. Aside from what the book is about, or even what its message is, why am I really doing this?
I listed off a few things. At the very basic level, I want to give others the leg up that I wish I had when I was starting out. Specifically, I want to help other illustrators navigate the early and middle stages of their career with a greater sense of purpose and resolve. I don’t want people to give up. I want people to realize their passion and potential. I want them to see ways through big challenges, to know that when they struggle, they are not alone. And I want them to have some practical tips and tricks that will make their efforts, and their jobs, more enjoyable.
Another reason for writing is a bit more absurd, when I put it into words. Leaders, experts, people who are truly influential—they all have a book, a manifesto, a guide to their own method for navigating whatever their world or particular category of struggle happens to be. I don’t want to be a cult leader or a guru (obviously), but I will accept that, as a teacher, I am a kind of leader. I don’t take it lightly that I have taught almost 90,000 students on Skillshare. So there are a lot of people who, at least theoretically, are open to learning more from me. In some way, by the grace of God or by some cosmic mistake, I am a very small ‘l’ leader to a bunch of people. So, what do I do with this? It just seems logical to gather together my most essential guiding principles (as an illustrator) and make this available to people who find what I teach to be helpful.
Another reason for writing is to scratch my own itch. I own a book or two on the topic of illustration; some happen to be on the topic of making a living by making art. Very few books that are actually written for illustrators (or aspiring illustrators) really do it for me. There is lots of information about the various aspects of setting up a business and working for clients, and even about finding one’s artistic voice, but I have yet to read one that feels like it has a soul. Meanwhile, there are many great books outside of illustration that do this wonderfully: The War of Art (Stephen Pressfield), Keep Going (Austin Kleon), and It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be (Paul Arden), to name a few. These books capture something about the experience of illustration from the inside. They get at the doubts and other negative emotions creatives wrestle with, and give us a way through. And they are easy to read. Not cleverly laid-out with side bars and guest interviews, illustrations and diagrams (to appeal to the creative crowd, I suppose). They read a bit more like devotionals or meditations. They’re the kind of books you could read on the bus. I want to write a book about the experience of illustrating, in a soulful way, which you could read on the bus—or by the pool, or on the airplane, or in the bathroom, or at your desk. You read it because you want to, not because you have to. You pick it up and know that you could start anywhere and find something to bite into—something encouraging, or insightful, or practical.
I also want to write because I love to teach. I love to make seemingly-difficult things seem simple. I like to give names to things so they are more accessible, or defeat-able, in the case of bad things.
Lastly, I want to empower people to create more like themselves. There is so much pressure to conform, to look like everyone else. There’s definitely a lot of impressive, cool work being made, but very little originality. I value skill, technique, and even a well-executed on-trend piece of work, but above all, I value originality and personal perspective. When these are paired with skill and technique, amazing things happen. I want to help more people discover their own voices, their own perspective, and to help them discover ways of bringing this out through their art.
How I will do this is the subject of another entry. But today, I am holding this statement of purpose up to the light and seeing how it holds up. My coach asked me how I will hold my purpose in front of me, as I continue down this journey of writing a book. This is how: writing it down here, on this blog, as a record, and sharing it with my audience. Last night, Coach left me a Simon Sinek quote, which I will now butcher in a paraphrase: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do.”
So, do you buy it?
