A recording artist had started writing a book about creative work. Not long after, he read The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. “Every page made me feel better about my own artistic pursuits,” the artist writes. 

Then, doubt came over him.

Rick’s book was so good that the artist wondered if he needed to write their own book about the same subject. 

The artist found the answer a few days later, also from Rick. On a podcast, Rick and his collaborator Malcolm Gladwell were discussing imposter syndrome. Creative work wasn’t about competition, it was about love and inspiration.

Rick made another point: each person’s work would become uniquely theirs. Rick could only write Rick’s book, and Malcolm could only write Malcolm’s book. When I interviewed Gene Luen Yang, he told me something similar, “You can have two people with the same idea, and that idea executed is going to look 180 from each other, to the point where you can’t even recognize that the original seed was the same idea.”

When I was working on the first draft of Creative Doing, Seth Godin was just preparing to publish The Practice. Austin Kleon had published Steal Like an Artist many years ago, and Julia Cameron published The Artist’s Way much before that. I experienced the same doubts that Max described, except I wasn’t the lead singer of a band with a huge following and I had no book deal.

The answer, for me at the time, was to shift my focus away from the doubt and to focus on finishing the work. Love for the work, and inspiration, are great places to shift your focus to. So is the understanding that your work will be yours, no matter what.

The artist was Max Kerman, the lead singer for the Arkells. After he heard Rick’s advice to Malcolm, Max felt free to finish his book, Try Hard. Max said it his way. He made a new option, and the world is better for it.