It’s rare for me not write anything.
Yesterday was one of those not writing days and well, as much as I preach daily emails for all the various reasons and benefits. A day off won’t kill you.
Just don’t take too many days off cause then it’ll spiral into many days off…
Anyways. I am back to be a menace to your inbox.
Inspired by my fellow writer and romantic Cole Shafer, here be a list just for you. (I rarely do lists but this was fun)
100 Laws for the Wildhearted: A Manifesto for Artists, Makers, and Other Beautiful Monsters
- Tell a story like you’re catching lightning in a jar made of your own ribs.
- Romanticise the dirt under your fingernails. It’s proof you’ve been digging.
- Make art, not algorithm bait and zuckermuskbullshit.
- If you can’t be original, be so damn good the ghosts get jealous.
- Be strange. Be unmarketable. Then make them market you anyway.
- Taste is a weapon; sharpen it until it draws blood.
- If it doesn’t wreck you a little, it won’t wreck them at all.
- Clever is fine. Clear is divine. Confuse no one but yourself.
- You can’t bore people into ecstasy.
- Make something they whisper to their friends like a secret sin.
- The frame and the colours are the story. Don’t treat them like furniture.
- Quality is the altar. Sacrifice everything but your soul upon it.
- Without a soul, your “brand” is a zombie puppet.
- Competing on price is how art dies in fluorescent lighting.
- AI is the devil, reclaim your soul before it’s too late.
- Do the weird thing only you can do. The cracked, crooked, you-shaped thing.
- Rules aren’t cages. They’re bones. Snap them and grow new ones.
- Carve away everything that doesn’t pulse.
- Build one cathedral. Bleed in every brick.
- Focus like a sniper with trembling hands.
- Juggling a hundred dreams means you’ll drop every damn one.
- Moving isn’t progress. Dancing might be.
- Decide boldly. Even when you’re wrong, do it beautifully.
- Fear is a compass. Walk toward the teeth.
- Audacity. Audacity. Always audacity. (Tattoo it on your bones.)
- Punch up at gods, never down at mortals.
- Take no shit. Eat the criticism, digest the truth, spit the rest.
- Learn the rules. Then snap their necks with grace.
- Be the quiet storm. The unseen machine.
- If you hate the story, rewrite the mythology.
- Own your failures like feral pets. Name them. Feed them. Learn from them.
- Promise less, deliver art that burns brighter than what was asked.
- The audience knows their wounds, but not their medicine. You’re the apothecary.
- Heal, don’t sell. But if you must sell, sell healing.
- Follow up like a ghost that won’t stop haunting.
- If you are the artist, your first product is belief.
- When you’re lost, go there in person. Art lives where friction does.
- Relationships are compound interest for the soul.
- Do the thing that doesn’t scale. Handwrite. Handpaint. Handbleed.
- Outsource the boring stuff twice. Then learn the magic yourself.
- Study how barbers, churches, and cults captivate people. Then use it for good.
- Find the hungry, the weird, the overlooked cause they’re tomorrow’s giants.
- Hire slow. Fire your inner cynic fast.
- Committees murder ideas with polite smiles. Protect yours.
- Praise in the light. Critique in the dark.
- Good work breeds more work. Be careful what you summon.
- Winners make worlds. Losers imitate theirs.
- Relevance fades. Legacy becomes dust coated in gold. Choose legacy.
- Study the bones of the dead. They left you blueprints.
- Don’t build your dream castle on someone else’s digital sand. (I learnt this one the hard way. RIP 200 000+ followers)
- Yesterday’s tools won’t carve tomorrow’s myths. Adapt. Mutate.
- Think in centuries. Act before lunch.
- Chop wood. Carry wonder.
- Passion flickers. Persistence fuels the stars.
- Be the one who’s still there when everyone else quits.
- Your body is your brush. Treat it like an instrument, not an afterthought.
- Pay yourself first. Every hour of the day belongs to you, your thoughts and the muse before anyone and anything else.
- Keep a year’s worth of hope (and rent) in the bank. (A fuck it fund)
- Cash is king. But margin and creative space is the queen that rules him.
- Everything is temporary. Make it eternal anyway.
- When in doubt: make something that scares you, then show it to the world.
- Discipline is just romance with structure.
- Rest is part of the process. Even volcanoes sleep.
- Don’t chase balance, chase alignment.
- Ritual is rocket fuel. Build one. Light it daily.
- Reject cynicism when you can; it’s sugar-coated despair.
- If you find yourself jealous, study instead of sulk.
- Comparison poisons creation. Antidote: empathy and movement.
- Make a habit of finishing things. Corpses tell better stories than embryos.
- You think you’re blocked. Actually, you’re incubating. But don’t stay stuck forever.
- Treat failure like compost. It stinks but grows miracles.
- Don’t fetishize humility. Earn it with scars.
- The first draft isn’t trash, it’s raw ore. Melt it. Forge it.
- Every artist must be a hunter and a monk.
- The muse respects deadlines.
- Create like everyone’s watching. Edit like no one is.
- Turn pain into narrative structure. (That’s where the best writing and creating gets done)
- Let your weirdness be the handshake that opens doors.
- The work is the marketing. The rest is choreography.
- Don’t chase perfection; chase resonance.
- Everything you make is a self-portrait. Be proud of the monster.
- Don’t bow to gatekeepers, they’re just scared you’ll climb the wall.
- Romanticise failure, but don’t build your house there.
- Make quiet art loud, and loud art whisper.
- If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re repeating yourself.
- Fuck trends. They die faster than moths in rain.
- Make stuff you want to exist in the world. If not you, who?
- The muse loves movement. Walk. Drive. Wash dishes. Invite her in.
- Don’t polish forever. Shine once, release it, start again.
- Momentum is oxygen. Protect it.
- Learn business. Not to sell out, but to stay free.
- Don’t become a brand. Become a myth.
- Make friends with solitude; she’s brutal but honest.
- Art doesn’t owe anyone an explanation.
- Make things for your future ghost to be proud of.
- Try everything once, but finish something thrice.
- No one is coming to save your project. You’re the cavalry. You are the carpenter that has to get their hands splintered and bruised.
- Make love to curiosity daily.
- Die on your own hill but make sure the view is worth it.
- Keep your torch lit, even when the rain won’t stop. Someone, somewhere, needs to see it.
Stephen Walker.