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

Bestselling author and creativity expert Jeff Goins dismantles the myth that being creative is a hindrance to success by revealing how an artistic temperament is in fact a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

The Starving Artist Is a Myth

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 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 many 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.