9 Questions to Ask Yourself if You Want to Be Creative for a Living

1. Are you serious?

What I don’t mean here is — “are you excited?”

Excitement is the currency of the naive. Grit is the real treasure.

You need grit to finish a project you said you would do, even though it will take you until 1 A.M. and even though you will have to get up for a 7 A.M. appointment the next day.

Creating stuff is fun. Making a living from it is serious.

2. Are you sure?

“You’re talkin’ ‘bout the American Dream. You find something that you love, and then you twist it, and you torture it, try and find a way to make money at it. You spend a lifetime doing that. At the end, you can’t find a trace of what you started out lovin’.”

— Justin Matisse, Hope Floats

Just a reminder — not everything you do has to make money.

3. Are you a self-starter?

I once knew this girl — bright, clever, quick, hard-working. At one point in her life, she went after everything, hard…