Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is somewhat of an icon for writers. A man-of-all-trades when it comes to prose, he produces the written word for all ages, and very successfully, be it on the page, on film or in the sound waves.
He recently delivered a commencement speech which is one of the best I’ve heard…for anyone…but especially for those of us who fit no mold in the workplace and are happy not to do so.
“When you start out on a career in the arts, you have no idea what you’re doing. This is great,” he says in his commencement address to the class of 2012 at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. “People who know what they’re doing know the rules and they know what is possible and what is impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can.”
This is the artist.
Robin F. Gainey 
Just took the time to listen to this through. Loved it! Let’s go pretend to be the kind of authors who can effortlessly sell oodles of books, Robin, what do you say? 😉
At the end, when they panned the audience, I thought, “That looks like the Academy of Music”—then saw at the end that this was taken at the University of the Arts, over in my back yard! Fun. Thanks for the inspiration.
I love that someone actually reads my blog….and that that someone is you. Send me the typos and line edits. LOL.
🙂