Book Review: Real Artists Don't Starve

Real Artists Don’t Starve: Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the New Creative Age

Jeff Goins

Tags: Creativity, Mindset, Tools for Success

Book Cover Summary: We’ve heard it a thousand times: There’s no money in art. It’s too risky. You’ll starve. So we end up chasing more stable careers. We become lawyers and doctors and bankers instead of poets and the filmmakers and painters. We settle. And in the end, our best work suffers.

The truth is we do not have to choose between a creative life and a prosperous one. In fact, many of history’s most creative minds—from Michelangelo to Shakespeare to Steve Jobs—succeeded not because they succumbed to the myth of the starving artist but precisely because they didn’t.

Today we live in a New Renaissance, an era of unprecedented opportunity in which you can share your creative work without fear of suffering or starving. Drawing lessons from the likes of Jim Henson, C.S. Lewis, Dr. Dre, and may others, bestselling author and entrepreneur Jeff Goins invites us to drop the myths, worries, and flat-out lies that have been drilled into us our entire lives and instead reveals an empowering truth: Real artists don’t starve. They THRIVE.

Reinventurer’s Review: Real Artists Don’t Starve provides interesting insights into the creative age we live in right now. This is an eye-opening approach to living creatively. Some aspects of the creative process will sound familiar as will approaches to marketing. However for those of us who might have put off our creative endeavors to make a living, this provides new insights into how we could have or still can be the creative entrepreneur we always wanted to be.

Goins breaks down his book into three parts: Mind-set, Market, and Money. A creative person must first and foremost adopt a growth mindset, one that says:

I am not an artist YET.

Hard work and grit can get me there.

It’s a necessity to take risks and get out of my comfort zone.

Hooking up with a teacher is smart, not cheating.

Strategic stubbornness can be used to my advantage.

To market your creativity Goins suggests you find patrons, those who support your work with money, expertise, or connections. He suggests marketing can be enhanced by working within an artists’ community, collaborating, and competing with other artists. (Eric Weiner wrote an entire book on this theory in his book The Geography of Genius.) Another interesting strategy he promotes is practicing your work in public like finding a job that needs some of your creative skills that you can get paid as you hone them.

Goins puts an end to the starving artist mentality in the last section on money. He expects creatives to know their worth and charge for it. Don’t sell yourself short and don’t give up the

rights to your work without a lot of thought first.

Real Artist Don’t Starve is a quick and entertaining read with sound and motivating advice for any of us who want to tap into the talents we are hungry to develop.

Questions to Ponder and Discuss

In what ways does your current mindset hinder your creativity?

What myths have you bought into about creative entrepreneurs?

What characteristics, such as stubbornness, do you have that can be used to help you further your creative endeavors?

How might you go about finding a community of like-minded creatives to hang out with, collaborate with, and build a working relationship with?

Is there a way you can publicly hone your creative skills in your current job, in a new job, or in other ways?

How will you go about establishing the worth of your creative skills, products, and the time it takes for you to create?