The Starving Artist Story

“How are you going to make any money doing that? You’re going to end up a starving artist. You should get a real job.”

I heard that in high school, that age where adults start asking what you are going to do with your life and expect a practical answer. This is not just my story though. It is the story of so many artists, creatives, writers, filmmakers, photographers, sculptors, painters, musicians, anyone who dreamed of taking what was in their imagination and bringing it into the world.

We are surrounded by art every day. Cinemas, galleries, museums, shops, clothing, soundtracks, architecture, books. Someone makes it. Someone gets paid to make it. And yet, if you tell people you want to pursue art, the default warning is that you will starve.

When you don’t make art, you starve yourself of creativity. You starve the world of creativity. So when I first heard the starving artist line, and when I learned that other creative friends had heard it too, there was a pang of disappointment. Maybe even a brief moment of acceptance.

“Yeah, maybe I should pursue something else… how will I make money?”

Then something else kicked in, almost like adrenaline.

“No. I am doing this. I love storytelling. I love movies. I love filmmaking.”

There was no other career in my head. Just be creative. I didn’t have the language for it then, but this is the first moment where starving artist and hungry artist split apart.

A starving artist is a story other people tell you about your life.
A hungry artist is the story you decide to live out anyway.

Back then I couldn’t explain it that way. I just knew one thing.

I was hungry for this.

The Kid with the Camcorder

That hunger started early. I was around ten when my father pulled out the VHS camcorder and wanted to show my brother and me a fun “trick.” He filmed us talking, paused, replaced us with stuffed animals, then hit record again. When he played it back, we “turned” into stuffed animals. My mind was blown.

The camcorder became a paintbrush. I used it constantly. My brother showed me how stop motion worked with G.I. Joe figures. I wrote “scripts.” I twisted ketchup packets from McDonald’s and slapped them on my chest so they would explode like squibs. Fake blood everywhere. I was not obsessed with the tool, I was obsessed with telling stories.

I wanted to do more. I got my friends involved. But that wasn’t enough. I wanted to learn more, do more, feed the hunger.

This was the year 2000. No YouTube. No tutorials. I wasn’t in LA or New York. I lived in a normal middle-class area where art wasn’t pouring out of every corner. But my high school offered a media class. I learned how to edit reel-to-reel using VHS tapes. For Christmas, I asked for basic editing software for our home computer and started making terrible short films.

If you think back, you probably have your own version of this. It might not have been a camcorder. Maybe it was a sketchbook, a guitar, a sewing machine, a cheap DSLR, a pirated copy of Photoshop, or a notebook filled with illustrations. Nobody had to convince you to use it. Hunger just keeps tugging you in the same direction.

The Hunger Evolves

In college I just wanted to make more things. I took media classes, made shorts, and looked for ways to apply what I was learning outside the classroom. Those attempts to “do more” were also my first unintentional attempts to monetize. I convinced small companies to let me and a few classmates make commercials for them. I took headshots for fifty dollars.

I kept trying to fulfill my hunger for creativity, but without noticing that another hunger was growing. The hunger for business, for entrepreneurship, for revenue, for earning a living doing the thing I loved. I never sat down and said, “let me figure out how to make money.” It was more like: I want to make things, and I want this to be my life, so I need to find a way to get paid for it.

When I later went to film school, all of this accelerated. I made commercials. I directed music videos. I worked on real productions. I launched the 48 Hour Film Project in Savannah and earned money from it. I got pulled into reality TV sets and learned new departments on the fly. I began to understand the entertainment industry as a collection of overlapping opportunities, not a single narrow job title.

Slowly, I stopped thinking, “I want to be a movie director.”

I was still hungry to tell stories, but now I was also hungry to see how many ways those stories, and the skills behind them, could get me the career I wanted out in the real world. That is the real shift from starving to hungry.

Building Around the Art

I was making money, building momentum, growing a network, learning new skills, and staying creative. And I was realizing something I wish someone had told me earlier: you don’t have to only make the art and sell the art to make money. There is so much around the art that can make money too.

Sometimes that meant getting paid to produce, write, direct, or edit. Sometimes it came from teaching, consulting, or helping a team because I had done a version of the problem before. I wasn’t starving. It wasn’t always easy. Sometimes I was just getting by. But if I had found a way before, why would that suddenly stop now?

Many artists are further along in this process than they think. You might already be doing things that are the early shape of a business around your art even if you have never called it that. Maybe you are doing occasional paid gigs for friends-of-friends, helping on projects in roles “next to” your main art form, or teaching someone what you know for free. It might not feel official, but those experiences, skills, and relationships are the start of the hungry artist path.

What you create is needed in this world

Someone out there is looking for the thing you are making. A fan, an audience, a customer. They don’t know it yet, but they are searching for it. You and your work matter. You can have a career as an artist without starving, if you let the hunger drive you.

This article is an excerpt from my new book: The Hungry Artist: How Creatives Build Sustainable Careers Doing the Work They Love.

P.S. Here are the three best ways I can help you right now:

1. One-on-one coaching: Want help building your creative career? Work with me privately.

2. Hungry Artist Cohort: Join other creatives and build your sustainable career together using the Four Core areas.

3. YouTube: I share deeper, practical training on my YouTube channel.