Dear Author/Artist/Musician/Director/Dancer/Actor/Game Designer/Entertainment Industry Professional/etc.

CONGRATULATIONS!

You have arrived! It’s been a long, hard road getting here, but now that your book has been published/show has been hung/act has been signed/movie is being produced/etc etc, you have joined an elite fraternity of the lucky, the persistent, and the just damned good.
Welcome! Have a drink!

As part of your orientation, we have prepared a special fact sheet of guidelines and safety tips for dealing with your new success.

1) You are not a special unique snowflake. Your professional ability to be creative in an entertaining fashion does not make you better, smarter, or more worthy than anybody else. It may make you more interesting, but then, you are paid to be interesting, are you not?

If you are not interesting, you may want to work on that. It will increase your number of dinner invitations and decrease the chances of [15], below.

2) Genius and insanity are anecdotally linked. This does not mean that insanity is desirable.

3) Unless it is interesting.

4) Your character flaws do not make you a better artist. Get over that idea right now. Nobody really gives a damn about your melodramatic temper tantrums and sulks, and they just make you look like a diva.

5) The fans will never agree on whether they like what you are doing. However, if less than a third of them are in favor of it, you may want to try something else. After all, they do pay your bills.

6) This does not excuse you from artistic integrity.

7) Some people are going to take everything you say way too seriously, and cite it as chapter and verse. Don’t drink the Kool-Aid. Your opinions, except those as regard your professional skills, are worth exactly what they were worth yesterday.

8) Other people are going to take what you say way too seriously, and revile you for it. Probably by misinterpreting whatever you said in the worst light possible.

Sorry about that.

9) Yes, the fans and critics are entitled to their own stupid opinions. Try to be gracious about it. You may find the phrase, “I never thought of it that way!” to be useful. Also, when confronted with a particularly aggressive specimen of the variety who really wants you to be wrong about something, the phrase, “Okay, so it didn’t work for you. Thanks.” is often effective. Talking to them… isn’t.

If they’re really pushy, exhibiting signs of Extreme Fan Entitlement, just disengage. It will save you endless hours for work.

10) Whatever you do, don’t go on the internets and rebut reviewers, accuse them of conspiracy, or taking kickbacks from your high-school enemies. It looks bad. If you must bitch, go bitch on your own website, as God intended. (There are those who feel that artists should suffer reviewers in silence. Me, I think that’s silly. Politicians don’t suffer criticism in silence. They whine and thrash! (And before you ask, I’m a critic and a book reviewer, too.))

Commentary, I have no problem with, especially in places like personal blogs. If nothing else, it’s illuminating to see what writers were attempting to do, whether they pulled it off or not. But you know, if you feel the need to defend yourself, you should probably have a nice hot shower and a lie down and go work on a book or something.)

11) People will assume all sorts of insane things about you, and assign you agendas, and assume they have a firm grasp on your politics from exposure to your art. They will be stupidly wrong. Deal with it.

13) You do not matter. But what you *do*–that matters. You are not God’s gift, but your work is. Once you begin releasing your creations to a wider audience, you exist to give everybody who is busy out doing the work of living in the world (work you are not exempt from, I might add) a hook on which to hang their belief. You exist to fill a specific role in society: to reveal patterns and connections, and to help people be both strong and compassionate.

If you are any kind of an artist at all, somebody somewhere is going to hang his or her life, emotional well-being, and/or recovery on your work. It’s a sacred trust.

Try not to screw it up.

14) Some of them may confuse your work with you. Do not be distracted by this.

15) Chances are, you will die in poverty.

Sorry about that.