Pixarspiration

If you're an artist, you need to read this today. And every day. And also, you are an artist (we all are), so read this. It's an excerpt from an analysis of the now-internet-famous "Pixar's 22 Rules of Story" by Pixar storyteller Vladamir Bugaj.

"Anything you do may fail, even if you’re very experienced.

Just look at baseball (it’s true, the only essential rule
of being a writer is that you must compare things to
baseball).

Teams play over 150 games per season. That’s a lot of
experience even in just one season. The 1906 Chicago Cubs
won 77% of their games — the best baseball winning
percentage ever. But they lost the World Series, along with
33% of their regular season games. And only fourteen teams
have won 70% of the time or better in the last hundred and
forty years.

Ted Williams reached base during 48% of his at-bats, for
the best on-base record ever. That means Ted Williams, the
greatest threat at the plate in baseball history, failed
more than half the time (52%).

An average major league player fails to reach base 65% of
the time. A 65% failure rate is considered a good record
for a solid professional career as a hitter.

Every time you step up to the plate in any discipline you
risk failure. The professionals are the ones who keep going
back to the plate and working it. The greats are the ones
who never give up, learn from every mistake, and with a
combination of perseverance, ability, and great luck manage
to go beyond.

Of course there are big differences between sports and the
arts, but the basic idea is the same: you have to risk
failing in order to get up there at all, and when you do
fail, keep stepping back up until you get a hit. (But make
sure to keep studying, practicing, and refining your craft
in the meantime.)"