Lightning in a bottle

Thoughts on creative success

Thank you to all my new paid subscribers! I feel like I have to SIT UP now and like, write about something meaningful.

My best friend Margie Stohl and I had lunch the other day. We don’t get to see each other much because we take each other for granted and also we can always flake on each other half an hour before we plan to see each other. Usually because one of our kids or significant others needs us, or deadlines hit, or we’re just too tired to get out of the house. Marg calls this the “no penalty flake” because we can always flake and no one ever gets hurt feelings or punishes the other for flaking. Having a friend you can flake on without consequences is the best kind of friend.

Marg and Mel and BBQ chicken and fries from REDDI CHICK at the Brentwood Country Mart. We started and run two book festivals, wrote two books together, and can flake on each other anytime. BFFS!

Margie and I have written books together and run two book festivals together and speak in shorthand and ESP. We were talking about our kids who are creative, and the risks of pursuing a career in the arts. At one point we both said creative success is lighting in a bottle, a miracle, unexpected, and nothing you can plan for. If you’re a creative you plan for financial failure. That’s the most realistic way to look at life as an artist. Failure, poverty. As Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan said in that movie, “I’d like to be a musician who eats.”

If you haven’t seen A COMPLETE UNKOWN you must! Also James Mangold was my film TA when I was at Columbia and he was literally the nicest person ever. He gave my documentary film an A+! Always so proud that he taught me and of all his success!

I never expected to make that much money off my writing. When I first started, I was a freelance essayist and I had a good corporate job, and my writing brought in low five figures. A friend at the paper said he could make it on seven thousand dollars a year. (This was in 1996.) In New York City. Back then I was making six figures from my corporate job, and I couldn’t imagine being that pauvre.