Author: Herbert Lui

• Three things about creative success

  1. Define what creative success means to you. Try to find an intrinsic source of motivation that you can work towards. 2. Extrinsic rewards matter, because you deserve to be recognized for your good work. Sometimes, these rewards need you to compromise. You will need to decide if it’s worth it. 3. Vincent van Gogh…

  Herbert Lui

  May 17, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations

• Wading through the junk

  When science fiction was still emerging, one criticism of the genre was the sheer volume of bad work. After decades of defending science fiction, one writer realized that the criticism applied to everything. “Ninety percent of everything is crap,” he said. That observation became known as Sturgeon’s Law. “One of my painting teachers said 85…

  Herbert Lui

  May 16, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential, Turning Stories

• What will you grow in your mud?

  Sometimes, people ask me why I wrote a book about creativity. Short answer: it’s because I experienced a creative block. (Long answer here!) I spent many years looking for the answer to this creative block, and I put the most useful information I found into my book Creative Doing. I still often find myself experiencing…

  Herbert Lui

  May 15, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories

• Maybe passion had nothing to do with it

  Most people do not get paid to do their hobbies. (Trying to make money off your hobby could actually ruin it.)  No matter your passion, it will ebb and flow. Actively cultivating passion, to love your job—whatever it happens to be, is a more resilient strategy than passively expecting passion to carry you through your…

  Herbert Lui

  May 14, 2025

  Creator Confidential, Turning Stories

• Walking your path

  In my 20s, I watched a lot of interviews with artists so I could understand how they found success. I believed I could reverse engineer these paths, and I appreciated this genre of media so much I started making my own by interviewing recording artists and authors. While I learned more than my fair share,…

  Herbert Lui

  May 13, 2025

  A Matter of Time, Creator Confidential, Turning Stories

• Is time working with you, or against you?

  Does your current position get stronger with time, or are you running out of time? If you did what you did today every day for a decade, will you get closer to your goal or further from it? Are you running down the clock, or do you wake up feeling energized more days than not?…

  Herbert Lui

  May 12, 2025

  A Matter of Time

• Three things about friends

  1. The internet makes it easier to find the perfect people for you. These are the exact individuals you want to be in touch with. You will feel a much deeper connection with them than most of the other people you meet. Since you meet these people online, you may develop thinner relationships with them—seeing…

  Herbert Lui

  May 11, 2025

  Life

• Intense emotions and clear actions

  “Inspiration is for amateurs,” Chuck Close says. There are two ways to interpret this: 1. A professional shows up even when they don’t feel inspiration. They show up every day and do the work. They don’t wait for an intense emotion to pull them into the work. 2. A professional does not mindlessly engage inspiration.…

  Herbert Lui

  May 10, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential, Turning Stories

• Optimism vs. delusion

  Making the choice to be optimistic is always worth it, especially when it’s the more difficult decision to make. As Bob Iger, who leads Disney, puts it, optimism is the ability to focus on what matters—steering your team towards the best possible outcome, and moving forward in spite of setbacks. It also means letting go…

  Herbert Lui

  May 9, 2025

  Expectations, Turning Stories

• Define your work

  What do you do? Who do you do it for? Why? Answering these questions, and others like them, is hard work. It can also feel painful, because you commit to being labelled. Even though you contain multitudes, you’re making a decision: you will be known for one thing, for now and in the future. Your…

  Herbert Lui

  May 8, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential, Promotion