make good art speech

Make Good Art: Neil Gaiman’s Advice on the Creative Life, Adapted by Design Legend Chip Kidd

By maria popova.

When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art . I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician — make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor — make good art. IRS on your trail — make good art. Cat exploded — make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before — make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and that doesn’t even matter. Do what only you can do best: Make good art. Make it on the bad days, make it on the good days, too.

A wise woman once said , “If you are not making mistakes, you’re not taking enough risks.” Gaiman articulates the same sentiment with his own brand of exquisite eloquence:

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something. So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

Revisit the talk in its original delivery below, and reabsorb its eight indispensable lessons :

Complement Make Good Art with more remarkable wisdom for the precipice of adulthood from David Foster Wallace , Jacqueline Novogratz , Ellen DeGeneres , Aaron Sorkin , Barack Obama , Ray Bradbury , J. K. Rowling , Steve Jobs , Robert Krulwich , Meryl Streep , and Jeff Bezos .

— Published May 14, 2013 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/05/14/make-good-art-neil-gaiman-chip-kidd/ —

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Neil Gaiman Commencement Speech: 'Make Good Art' (VIDEO)

Neil Gaiman gave a commencement speech last week, and it was typically inspiring. The fiction author famous for "The Sandman" and "Coraline" was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts at the ceremony at Philadelphia’s the University of the Arts last Thursday.

He may not have ever attended college (as he notes in his address), but he spoke of academia in a positive way and was, as always, both funny and inspirational.

The speech has gone viral on Twitter and has over 67,000 views, which doesn't come as a huge surprise given Gaiman's prominent social media presence (he has over a million followers) .

In the speech, he discussed the value of ignorance, stating, "If you don't know it's impossible, it's easier to do." He also urged the new graduates not to pursue endeavors solely for financial reasons, alluding to the first book he wrote, a biography of Duran Duran, for which he could not relinquish his rights because the publisher went bankrupt. He says that young artists should cherish their mistakes, and that the character "Coraline" was born from a misspelling of "Caroline."

Perhaps most importantly, Gaiman reiterates the importance of simply making good art:

When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician -- make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor -- make good art. IRS on your trail -- make good art. Cat exploded -- make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you're doing is stupid or evil or it's all been done before -- make good art.

Watch his speech and let us know what you think!

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Author Interviews

Neil gaiman turns his grad speech into 'good art'.

Make Good Art

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A year ago, writer Neil Gaiman told the graduating class at Philadelphia's University of the Arts that life is sometimes hard — that things will go wrong in love and business and friendship and health, and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And that the best thing an artist can do at those times is to "make good art."

That commencement speech became a hit on the Web and has now been adapted into a small book, titled, appropriately, Make Good Art.

When the unexpected happens, Gaiman says, "I think you're absolutely allowed several minutes, possibly even half a day to feel very, very sorry for yourself indeed. And then just start making art."

In the 1990s, Gaiman tells NPR's Neal Conan, he had spent several years working on a TV series in the U.K., and when it came out, it was met with "deafening silence — people didn't really like it very much."

But he put all of his upset and frustration about that failed series — Neverwhere — into writing a book, he says.

"And what's lovely is, over the years since then, the book has gone on to become this much-loved thing. And, actually, a couple of months ago, the BBC did a fantastic adaptation of the novel on the radio starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Sir Christopher Lee ... James McAvoy, these fantastic actors. And I thought, OK. You know, 15 years later, the thing fixed itself. The wheel turned."

Neil Gaiman's many books include American Gods, the comic book series The Sandman and, with graphic artist Chip Kidd, his latest, Make Good Art. His new novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, is due out in June.

Interview Highlights

On the lie he confessed to during the commencement speech

Neil Gaiman is also the author of Coraline , Amer ican Gods , Anansi Boys , Stardust and M Is for Magic . He was born in Hampshire, England, and now lives near Minneapolis. Kimberly Butler hide caption

Neil Gaiman is also the author of Coraline , Amer ican Gods , Anansi Boys , Stardust and M Is for Magic . He was born in Hampshire, England, and now lives near Minneapolis.

"It's not something that you could do in today's era of Google and easily accessible information. But when I started out as a very young journalist, phoning editors and just pitching stories, they would often say, well, who else have you written for? And I didn't want to say, well, I haven't actually written for anybody yet. So I would list likely sounding magazines — places that ... somebody like me might have worked for — and I got the jobs.

"And over the next six years, it became this mad point of honor for me to have worked for everybody on the list that I'd said in those first couple of months to people that I'd written for. So I wrote for ... all of these magazines in London, just so that later I could claim that I hadn't actually been lying, I'd just been slightly chronologically mixed-up."

On money as a motivator

"Whenever I did something where the only reason for doing it was money — and this was a lesson that I learned beginning with being a 23-year-old author hired to write a book about Duran Duran — that whenever I did something and the only reason for doing it was the money, normally something would go terribly wrong. And I normally wouldn't get the money and then I wouldn't have anything. Whereas, whenever I did anything where what prompted my doing it was being interested, being excited, caring, thinking this is going to be fun, even if things went wrong and I didn't get the money, I had something I was proud of. ...

"It's something that, you know, I forget. Sometimes somebody waves a paycheck and I go, 'I don't really have any reason for doing it, I'm not interested. But, yes, what amazing money, how can I say no?' And then I do it, and then I regret it. And you can almost feel the universe itself sighing, like, 'Why doesn't he learn this one?'

On the advice he got from horror writer Stephen King

More From Neil Gaiman

NPR's Backseat Book Club

Kids' book club: a 'graveyard' tour with neil gaiman, arts & life, watch this: neil gaiman's imaginative favorites.

"What I said in the speech, and what I say in the book, is the most important piece of advice I was ever given that I didn't pay attention to and I wished that I had, came in 1992 from Stephen King at a signing I did in Boston for a Sandman book called Season of Mists. And he came down. He saw the lines stretching around the block. He wanted to take me out for dinner, but the signing wasn't done until 10:30 at night. And I wound up in his hotel room with Steve and his family, and he said, you know, 'This is really wonderful, this is special. You should enjoy this. Just make a point of enjoying it.'

"And I didn't. I worried about it. I worried it was going to go away. I worried about the next story. I worried about getting things done. And there was a point, a good 15 years after that, where I finally started to relax. And I look back and I thought, you know, I could have enjoyed it. It all went just fine; my worrying about anything didn't change anything. ... I should have enjoyed it."

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"Make Good Art" Speech by Neil Gaiman

This speech was delivered as the keynote address for the May 17, 2012 commencement ceremony at The University of the Arts.

Speech Transcript

I never really expected to find myself giving advice to people graduating from an establishment of higher education.  I never graduated from any such establishment. I never even started at one. I escaped from school as soon as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I’d become the writer I wanted to be was stifling.

I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid for it, or they didn’t, and often they commissioned me to write something else for them.

Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education that those of my friends and family, who attended Universities, were cured of long ago.

Looking back, I’ve had a remarkable ride. I’m not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan, and I never did. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was 15 of everything I wanted to do: to write an adult novel, a children’s book, a comic, a movie, record an audiobook, write an episode of Doctor Who … and so on. I didn’t have a career. I just did the next thing on the list.

So I thought I’d tell you everything I wish I’d known starting out, and a few things that, looking back on it, I suppose that I did know. And that I would also give you the best piece of advice I’d ever got, which I completely failed to follow.

First of all : When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing.

This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can.

If you don’t know it’s impossible it’s easier to do. And because nobody’s done it before, they haven’t made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.

Secondly , If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that.

And that’s much harder than it sounds and, sometimes in the end, so much easier than you might imagine. Because normally, there are things you have to do before you can get to the place you want to be. I wanted to write comics and novels and stories and films, so I became a journalist, because journalists are allowed to ask questions, and to simply go and find out how the world works, and besides, to do those things I needed to write and to write well, and I was being paid to learn how to write economically,  crisply, sometimes under adverse conditions, and on time.

Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear cut, and sometimes  it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you are doing the correct thing, because you’ll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get.

Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be – an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics and supporting myself through my words – was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.

And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time.

I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work.

Thirdly , When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive. A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back.

The problems of failure are problems of discouragement, of hopelessness, of hunger. You want everything to happen and you want it now, and things go wrong. My first book – a piece of journalism I had done for the money, and which had already bought me an electric typewriter  from the advance – should have been a bestseller. It should have paid me a lot of money. If the publisher hadn’t gone into involuntary liquidation between the first print run selling out and the second printing, and before any royalties could be paid, it would have done.

And I shrugged, and I still had my electric typewriter and enough money to pay the rent for a couple of months, and I decided that I would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn’t get the money, then you didn’t have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn’t get the money, at least I’d have the work.

Every now and again, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me. I don’t know that it’s an issue for anybody but me, but it’s true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn’t wind up getting the money, either.  The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I’ve never regretted the time I spent on any of them.

The problems of failure are hard.

The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them.

The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you. It’s Imposter Syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened the Fraud Police.

In my case, I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard (I don’t know why he carried a clipboard, in my head, but he did) would be there, to tell me it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job, one that didn’t consist of making things up and writing them down, and reading books I wanted to read. And then I would go away quietly and get the kind of job where you don’t have to make things up any more.

The problems of success. They’re real, and with luck you’ll experience them. The point where you stop saying yes to everything, because now the bottles you threw in the ocean are all coming back, and have to learn to say no.

I watched my peers, and my friends, and the ones who were older than me and watch how miserable some of them were: I’d listen to them telling me that they couldn’t envisage a world where they did what they had always wanted to do any more, because now they had to earn a certain amount every month just to keep where they were. They couldn’t go and do the things that mattered, and that they had really wanted to do; and that seemed as a big a tragedy as any problem of failure.

And after that, the biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful. There was a day when I looked up and realised that I had become someone who professionally replied to email, and who wrote as a hobby.  I started answering fewer emails, and was relieved to find I was writing much more.

Fourthly , I hope you’ll make mistakes. If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something. And the mistakes in themselves can be useful. I once misspelled Caroline, in a letter, transposing the A and the O, and I thought, “ Coraline looks like a real name…”

And remember that whatever discipline you are in, whether you are a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a designer, whatever you do you have one thing that’s unique. You have the ability to make art.

And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that’s been a lifesaver. The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones.

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.

Make good art.

I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

Make it on the good days too.

And Fifthly , while you are at it, make your art. Do the stuff that only you can do.

The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that’s not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we’ve sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you . Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.

The things I’ve done that worked the best were the things I was the least certain about, the stories where I was sure they would either work, or more likely be the kinds of embarrassing failures people would gather together and talk about  until the end of time. They always had that in common: looking back at them, people explain why they were inevitable successes. While I was doing them, I had no idea.

I still don’t. And where would be the fun in making something you knew was going to work?

And sometimes the things I did really didn’t work. There are stories of mine that have never been reprinted. Some of them never even left the house. But I learned as much from them as I did from the things that worked.

Sixthly. I will pass on some secret freelancer knowledge. Secret knowledge is always good. And it is useful for anyone who ever plans to create art for other people, to enter a freelance world of any kind. I learned it in comics, but it applies to other fields too. And it’s this:

People get hired because, somehow, they get hired. In my case I did something which these days would be easy to check, and would get me into trouble, and when I started out, in those pre-internet days, seemed like a sensible career strategy: when I was asked by editors who I’d worked for, I lied. I listed a handful of magazines that sounded likely, and I sounded confident, and I got jobs. I then made it a point of honour to have written something for each of the magazines I’d listed to get that first job, so that I hadn’t actually lied, I’d just been chronologically challenged… You get work however you get work.

People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today’s world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three. Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They’ll forgive the lateness of the work if it’s good, and if they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as the others if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.

When I agreed to give this address, I started trying to think what the best advice I’d been given over the years was.

And it came from Stephen King twenty years ago, at the height of the success of Sandman. I was writing a comic that people loved and were taking seriously. King had liked Sandman and my novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens , and he saw the madness, the long signing lines, all that, and his advice was this:

“ This is really great. You should enjoy it. ”

And I didn’t. Best advice I got that I ignored.Instead I worried about it. I worried about the next deadline, the next idea, the next story. There wasn’t a moment for the next fourteen or fifteen years that I wasn’t writing something in my head, or wondering about it. And I didn’t stop and look around and go, this is really fun . I wish I’d enjoyed it more. It’s been an amazing ride. But there were parts of the ride I missed, because I was too worried about things going wrong, about what came next, to enjoy the bit I was on.

That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: to let go and enjoy the ride, because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places.

And here, on this platform, today, is one of those places. (I am enjoying myself immensely.)

To all today’s graduates: I wish you luck. Luck is useful. Often you will discover that the harder you work, and the more wisely you work, the luckier you get. But there is luck, and it helps.

We’re in a transitional world right now, if you’re in any kind of artistic field, because the nature of distribution is changing, the models by which creators got their work out into the world, and got to keep a roof over their heads and buy sandwiches while they did that, are all changing. I’ve talked to people at the top of the food chain in publishing, in bookselling, in all those areas, and nobody knows what the landscape will look like two years from now, let alone a decade away. The distribution channels that people had built over the last century or so are in flux for print, for visual artists, for musicians, for creative people of all kinds.

Which is, on the one hand, intimidating, and on the other, immensely liberating. The rules, the assumptions, the now-we’re supposed to’s of how you get your work seen, and what you do then, are breaking down. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. You can be as creative as you need to be to get your work seen. YouTube and the web (and whatever comes after YouTube and the web) can give you more people watching than television ever did. The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are.

So make up your own rules.

Someone asked me recently how to do something she thought was going to be difficult, in this case recording an audio book, and I suggested she pretend that she was someone who could do it. Not pretend to do it, but pretend she was someone who could. She put up a notice to this effect on the studio wall, and she said it helped.

So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.

And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.

Browse more of history's greatest speeches →

This speech was originally published on the University of the Arts website .

About the author

‍ Daniel Scrivner is an award-winner designer and angel investor. He's led design work at Apple, Square, and now ClassDojo. He's an early investor in Notion, Public.com, and Anduril. He founded Ligature: The Design VC and Outlier Academy . Daniel has interviewed the world’s leading founders and investors including Scott Belsky, Luke Gromen, Kevin Kelly, Gokul Rajaram, and Brian Scudamore.

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Make Good Art: Inspiration for Creative People Hardcover – May 14, 2013

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THIS BOOK IS FOR EVERYONE LOOKING AROUND AND THINKING, "NOW WHAT?”

Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed commencement address, "Make Good Art," thoughtfully and aesthetically designed by renowned graphic artist Chip Kidd. This keepsake volume is the perfect gift for graduates, aspiring creators, or anyone who needs a reminder to run toward what gives them joy.

When Neil Gaiman delivered his "Make Good Art" commencement address at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, he shared his thoughts about creativity, bravery, and strength. He encouraged the fledgling painters, musicians, writers, and dreamers to break rules and think outside the box. Most of all, he encouraged them to make good art .

The speech resonated far beyond that art school audience and immediately went viral on YouTube and has now been viewed more than a million times.

Acclaimed designer Chip Kidd brings his unique sensibility to this seminal address in this gorgeous edition that commemorates Gaiman's inspiring message.

• Print length 80 pages
• Language English
• Publisher William Morrow
• Publication date May 14, 2013
• ISBN-10 0062266764
• ISBN-13 978-0062266767
• See all details

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From the back cover.

In May 2012, bestselling author Neil Gaiman stood at a podium at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts to deliver the commencement address. For the next nineteen minutes he shared his thoughts about creativity, bravery, and strength: he encouraged the students before him to break rules and think outside the box. Most of all, he encouraged the fledgling painters, musicians, writers, and dreamers to make good art .

This book, designed by renowned graphic artist Chip Kidd, contains the full text of Gaiman’s inspiring speech. Whether bestowed upon a young artist beginning his or her creative journey, or given as a token of gratitude to an admired mentor, or acquired as a gift to oneself, this volume is a fitting offering for anyone who strives to make good art .

About the Author

Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling and multi-award winning author and creator of many beloved books, graphic novels, short stories, film, television and theatre for all ages. He is the recipient of the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and many Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. Neil has adapted many of his works to television series, including Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett) and The Sandman . He is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR and Professor in the Arts at Bard College. For a lot more about his work, please visit: https://www.neilgaiman.com/

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow; First Edition (May 14, 2013)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 80 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0062266764
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062266767
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.5 ounces
• #88 in Literary Speeches
• #1,917 in Creativity (Books)
• #10,036 in Motivational Self-Help (Books)

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Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman

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About the author

Neil gaiman.

Neil Gaiman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including Norse Mythology, Neverwhere, and The Graveyard Book. Among his numerous literary awards are the Newbery and Carnegie medals, and the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner awards. He is a Professor in the Arts at Bard College.

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What Neil Gaiman’s “Make Good Art” Speech Has Taught me about Books and Creativity

Laura Marie

Laura Marie is a writer and teacher in Ohio. She reads one or two audiobooks every week, loves falling into a good cooking memoir, and debates feasibility of tech from sci-fi books with her husband.

View All posts by Laura Marie

Right before becoming a teacher’s assistant in a creative writing class, I watched Neil Gaiman’s “Make Good Art” speech for the first time. I used it in the class and the students immediately enjoyed exhortations about how to react to life’s difficulties, like “Cat exploded? Make good art.” I think they took some aspects of the creative journey to heart, but of course many of the things Gaiman discusses are more interesting when you live them than when you hear about them.

What rings true for me is that choosing a good book, and making reading a substantial part of one’s life, have some things in common with Gaiman’s points. A few stand out:

three ways to keep a job (or a reader)

One of Gaiman’s funniest jokes is about how there are three things that help people keep their jobs, and that any two of them are enough to keep a job:

I think this can be extrapolated to books as well; reliable, high quality authors keep us coming back for more, but we are also willing to read things that are near and dear to us (easy to get along with), even if perhaps they aren’t the best work of our favorite authors. We are also willing to read a sharp series in our favorite genre even if the author takes years and years to provide us with the concluding volume of our beloved series.

moving toward or away from the mountain

Most readers don’t see their book reading as a trajectory or a career; in many cases, reading specifically toward something would take away some of the pleasure. That being said, I think it can sometimes be a valuable way to think about our finite reading time, especially as busy working adults or overloaded students. Gaiman chose work based on whether it moved him toward or away from the mountain, or the goals he had set for himself.

Would it be so bad if we picked our books based on our goals? Some would be overt, like self-help and business books, but others would be about self-care when we need a really light read in a heavy world, and others would be about choosing books that have relatable characters or that inform us about a part of existence that we don’t know well enough. Perhaps we should think about our reading as taking us somewhere, and choose between the always-too-many-to-read books based on what we really need and what really gets us closer to the mountain.

problems of success (professionally replying to email)

For people who find themselves crowding reading out of their lives, Gaiman’s point about the problems of success being difficult might resonate. When we aren’t successful, or are between jobs or studies, we often find ourselves reading a lot. Those times are when we get the most chance to delve deep into topics, but sometimes that enjoyment can be overshadowed by the worries about what we want to be doing instead of reading so much.

When success hit Gaiman, he realized that the problems he faced before were in some ways easier to handle, and he cited the example that he was replying to email more than he was writing during one point in his more busy part of his career. He had to intentionally find a way to reduce email time in order to get back to his craft.

Many readers also have other goals, and so crowding reading out of your life is just as possible as it was for Gaiman to crowd writing out. It seems like a good reminder that, when we get busy with the good things that are part of our goals, it doesn’t hurt to re-evaluate before we simply say “I’m just too busy to read.”

Make mistakes

This one is pretty self explanatory, but one of the most important points is that we should move beyond our typical reading choices when we can, never knowing what we’ll find. Certainly, a new book may confirm that mystery will never be your genre, but a new read might also turn out to be the start of a whole world opening up for you. Just as Gaiman exhorts people to make mistakes and find out what interesting conclusions lie on the other side of those mistakes, I encourage readers to broaden their minds and find a way to try new books whenever they can.

The Sunday Read: ‘What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise’

Inside the notorious “catch and kill” campaign that now stands at the heart of the former president’s legal trial..

By Lachlan Cartwright

Read by David Linski

Produced by Jack D’Isidoro and Aaron Esposito

Narration produced by Anna Diamond

Edited by John Woo

Original music by Aaron Esposito

Engineered by Corey Schreppel and Steven Szczesniak

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify

At the center of the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Manhattan is the accusation that Trump took part in a scheme to turn The National Enquirer and its sister publications into an arm of his 2016 presidential campaign. The documents detailed three “hush money” payments made to a series of individuals to guarantee their silence about potentially damaging stories in the months before the election. Because this was done with the goal of helping his election chances, the case implied, these payments amounted to a form of illegal, undisclosed campaign spending. And because Trump created paperwork to make the payments seem like regular legal expenses, that amounted to a criminal effort at a coverup, argued Alvin Bragg, the district attorney of Manhattan. Trump has denied the charges against him.

For Lachlan Cartwright, reading the indictment was like stepping through the looking glass, because it described a three-year period in his own professional life, one that he has come to deeply regret. Now, as a former president faces a criminal trial for the first time in American history, Cartwright is forced to grapple with what really happened at The Enquirer in those years — and whether and how he can ever set things right.

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Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Frannie Carr Toth and Krish Seenivasan.

Corey Schreppel leads the technical team that supports all Times audio shows, including “The Daily,” “Hard Fork,” “The Run-Up,” and “Modern Love.” More about Corey Schreppel

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