Corey Pemberton

Matt Groening, the creator of TV mega successes like The Simpsons and Futurama, is an inspirational story of perseverance, struggle, and creativity. Starting from nothing and amassing one of the largest fortunes in Hollywood – and breaking down TV paradigms while doing it – Groening’s journey is full of inspirational wisdom for all of us.

What drives him to create – and keep creating even after all these years? How did he stay driven during the hard times? It’s all in today’s article, so strap in!

On the Danger of Mega-Successes Becoming Millstones

Most of us dream of achieving even a shadow of the success as The Simpsons, Futurama, or other Groening creations. Rising to this pinnacle, however, has left the cartoonist with new obstacles to navigate.

One of the biggest challenges is refusing to let one creation (regardless of how successful it is) define your entire career. With over 600 episodes, 29 seasons and counting, The Simpsons doesn’t receive the acclaim that it used to. Diehard fans and critics alike feel that the magic of those earlier seasons is slipping away.

Although Groening is quick to point out just how much the show has evolved over the years, he’s grappling with how to end the show gracefully.

The Simpsons represented a paradigm shift in the world of TV programming. Its animation for adults concept, once groundbreaking, is now just one of many shows. As tastes and aesthetics change, perhaps even the most successful creations have a natural lifespan.

The challenge for Groening became – and it’s arguably a great problem to have – continuing to challenge himself and innovate. The Simpsons massive success brought with it a guaranteed “yes” from any TV studio listening to a pitch. Because he knows that he could pitch basically any new show successfully, he feels extra pressured to do something challenging:

…Maybe I inherited that spartan disciplinarian work ethic from my father – someone who worked hard his whole life and didn’t have an enormous amount to show for it. Whenever things get too comfy, I get a little nervous… I don’t know what else to do with myself. That’s the truth.¹

Creating art as culturally pervasive as The Simpsons introduces the risk of becoming defined by that very creation, by having it become a millstone that determines the rest of your career. But by pursuing his own projects (like Life in Hell) and innovating with shows like Futurama and now Disenchantment (with Netflix), Groening is navigating this challenge smoothly.

The Willingness to Take Promotion into Your Own Hands

After moving to Los Angeles at age 23 to pursue cartooning, Groening held down a series of odd jobs – chauffeur, record store employee, and clerk at a copy shop – to make ends meet.

For years he struggled to even do that. Living in what he calls “a couple of the sadder neighborhoods in Hollywood,” Groening was so broke he had to split hamburgers with his friends. Here he is reminiscing on their financial ambitions at the time:

My friends and I used to sit around when he had so little money that we had to split a burger at Astro Burger on Melrose Avenue and talk about what we would do if we ever had enough money to pay our rent on time.²

Even when Groening’s biggest ambition was to pay rent comfortably, he refused to let his circumstances end his cartooning dream.

He channeled a lot of his anxieties and struggles into a cartoon strip called Life in Hell, which ran from 1977 all the way until 2012. Unlike many other aspiring creatives, Groening didn’t let his work languish for years before finally working up the courage to show it to somebody.

Instead of contacting newspaper editors and patiently waiting for responses, Groening used the copier at work to self-publish his cartoons and distribute them at local punk section of the record store where he worked. After all, it was that DIY punk rock ethic that inspired him to take promotion into his own hands.

First came Life in Hell. I worked at a photocopy place. A perk was that when I wasn’t fighting with customers – an unavoidable part of the job – I was making copies of my comic. I copied them and took them around and sold them at a record store I worked at, which was another job.³

These efforts eventually paid off with the L.A. Reader giving Life in Hell a regular column. Other publications followed. And as Groening’s name got out, a Hollywood producer saw one of his columns and was impressed enough to get in touch. It was this same producer who asked Groening for help with short animated skits in the Tracy Ullman Show.

Success with those animated skits led to a meeting with producers at 21st Century Fox, who ultimately agreed to Groening’s pitch for The Simpsons. The rest is history. It all began with Groening’s stubborn persistence in his cartooning dream – and willingness to handle his own promotion.

One has to wonder if any of this would have ever happened if Groening had just sat by, sketching cartoons for himself and waiting for the perfect opportunity instead of creating one.

On Balancing Personal “Fun” Projects with More Commercial Hits

Like most creatives, Matt Groening’s artistic tastes range well beyond the mainstream. Yet he still enjoys mainstream art as well. Before he pitched The Simpsons, he was well aware of where the show fell on that spectrum would affect its potential for success:

I know I like stuff that very other people are going to enjoy. And then I like very mainstream stuff. As an experiment, I wanted to see how far I could sneak the stuff I really liked into mainstream culture. That was my goal. At the same time, I wanted the show to appeal to as many people as possible.⁴

This awareness – and the ultimate decision to pitch something mainstream enough for Fox’s tastes – led to The Simpsons‘ incredible success. It also gave Groening wiggle room to be subversive without alienating the large audience. By focusing on where his tastes and mainstream tastes overlapped, he was able to create an amazing living for himself and satisfying art without feeling like he “sold out.”

Even after mainstream projects like The Simpsons and Futurama rocketed into the stratosphere, Groening kept working on personal pet projects. Life in Hell ran all the way through 2012. This strip allowed him to focus on personal life issues and anxieties, served as a creative outlet, and even a type of personal therapy.

I love[d] doing ‘Life in Hell’ every week because it’s just me. Just me by myself and that’s fun – to sit down with a blank sheet of paper and see if I can write about another one of my anxieties.⁵

Creating a Healthy Scene of Friends, Rivals, and Contemporaries

Groening’s success can be attributed, at least in part, to the people he chose to surround himself with during his formative years.

The art of cartooning itself is an isolating one. But Groening was always intentional about associating with creative contemporaries who encouraged his efforts.

One of the first – and most important – connections came while he was a student at Evergreen State University. There, Groening met Lynda Barry, another cartoonist at Evergreen who was publishing in independent newspapers and magazines (“zines”).

It felt like I was going to be playing for the rest of my life, I was going to be goofing off. But when I met Lynda Barry, she, by work she was doing, showed me that you could do anything.⁶

Seeing how a young Barry, even as a college student, was successfully distributing her cartoons planted a seed that Groening carried with him to Los Angeles.

Although Barry and Groening have different tastes and lifestyles, they shared and a do-it-yourself work ethic. This friendship blossomed into a healthy rivalry, with the pair supporting each other between all the ribbing. A competitive spirit drove Groening to work even harder on his art.

After he graduated from Evergreen, Groening’s move to LA placed him at the heart of the burgeoning punk rock scene. Punk was an aggressive new style of music… but it was much more than that. It was an empowering, take-matters-into-your-own-hands approach to art and life.

It was in this punk scene where Groening met Gary Panter, the Texan illustrator who went on to become a lifelong friend. Groening made contact initially by writing a fan letter about a Panter comic he admired. Panter wrote back, and they struck up a friendship to which Groening attributes much of his success:

He brought that psychedelic crazed Gary Panter style to Saturday morning, and completely warped a generation of kids. Gary went first, and he was my role model.⁷

It Isn’t About the Money

Groening started his career in Los Angeles as a struggling cartoonist whose grandest dream was to make rent. Now, more than 40 years later, he has amassed an estimated wealth of $500 million. How’s that for a success story?

Sure, he drives a nicer car and lives in a mansion in Santa Monica. But what’s incredible is how little about Groening – his demeanor, humor, drive to create – has changed. He notes not needing to mentally calculate the cost of food he orders at restaurants as one of his greatest reliefs. This probably shouldn’t seem so surprising, because for Groening, money was never the main motivator anyway.

We wondered if we would live the way rich people were supposed to live or if we would live pretty much as we did then, except that we would have bigger piles of comic books and toys. Sadly, we’ve got bigger piles of comic books and toys.⁸

Groening argues that the best art often comes from struggle, so he’s always on guard not to let himself get too comfortable.

I don’t think there’s anything good for making art about being comfortable. It seems like the best art always comes from struggle.⁹

The war against comfort is real, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Just as we must push our bodies to discomfort to build muscle, we must stretch ourselves creatively to make our best art.

Imagine you’re sitting on a plane. Your seatmate just so happens to be a popular author, maybe even a bestseller.

Do you recognize them?

Probably not. The literary world isn’t known for its rock stars. Even uber successes like Stephen King, James Patterson, and Nora Roberts can move around discreetly in public. Unlike professional athletes or actors, they can coexist in the same universe as us “ordinary” folk.

Not Neil Gaiman, though. He’s the literary equivalent of a rock star. Known for his charming words and prolific output, Gaiman’s work spans everything from novels and comics, to children’s books and even an episode of Doctor Who. He packs huge auditoriums wherever he goes. All this becomes even more impressive when you consider that it’s happening today, when more of us are streaming videos or texting to pick up a book.

I wanted to know how Neil Gaiman did it. Here are some more insights into his creative process, assembled from a collection of interviews.

Inspiration Is for Amateurs

If you’ve just discovered Neil Gaiman, you’ll probably wonder where to start. Because his work spans different genres and mediums, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Couple that with his prolific social media output, the fact that he and his wife, Amanda Palmer, recently had a son, and constant globetrotting for signings and other events, and you’ll ask yourself: Does this man even sleep?

Perhaps the biggest lesson creatives can learn from Gaiman is his refusal to wait for inspiration to strike.

You write. That’s the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die.³

Gaiman is refreshingly honest about his struggles here. On some days, the writing feels effortless. You churn out thousands of words before even realizing what is happening. Your fingers can’t move fast enough. This is the magical high – of being in flow and in touch with your creative subconscious – that we’re all chasing.

But not all days are created equal. Gaiman has his bad days too. His prescription? Write right through through. Keep working, even when uninspired. Focus on the sentence, shot, or brushstroke directly in front of us.

Writing is like building a wall. It’s a continual search for the word that will fit in the text, in your mind, on the page. Plot and character and metaphor and style, all these become secondary to the words. The wall-builder erects her wall one rock at a time until she reaches the far end of the field.⁴

In the end, it’s this consistent output that will be rewarded. That’s what allows Gaiman to look back on his work and surprise himself with just how much he has created. Whether he’s feeling inspired is besides the point. Gaiman is frank about his inability to notice differences in quality between the “good days” and the “bad days:”

The problem is now you are doing a reading and you cannot for the life of you remember which bits were the gifts of the gods and dripped from your fingers like magical words and which bits were the nightmare things you just barely created and got down on paper somehow! Which I consider most unfair. As a writer, you feel like one or the other should be better.⁶

This is a liberating lesson for all of us. How we’re feeling during creation doesn’t matter. By showing up consistently and putting our hearts into our work, we’ve already won.

You Will Despair at Some Point – And That’s Okay

Self doubt is a strange beast. Some of us struggle with it daily. Others can create happily for months – only to be hit by a vicious wave of doubt when the work is complete. It might even come years or decades after your art has reached an audience. No one is immune!

This is something that even masters of their craft like Neil Gaiman struggle with as well. In one article for NaNoWriMo, he tells a fascinating story about his experience writing Anansi Boys:

The last novel I wrote… when I got three-quarters of the way through I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot… And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm – or even arguing with me – she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, ‘Oh, you’re at that part of the book are you?’

I was shocked. ‘You mean I’ve done this before?’

‘You don’t remember?’

‘Not really.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients.’⁷

It’s critical to point out here that this wasn’t coming from Gaiman at the beginning of his career. Anansi Boys was written years after Sandman, the series of graphic novels that catapulted Gaiman to super stardom. Fortunately, he could rely on an experienced agent to assure him that doubt – even downright despair – was just a stage of the creative process.

Although he didn’t realize it until his agent pointed it out, Gaiman struggles with this during every story he writes. The same goes for practically every other creative out there.

Simply expecting to despair at some point during the process – knowing that countless others have felt the same feelings you will and persevered to create masterpieces – offers comfort to continue. Doubt is like a speed bump on road to your final destination.

Believe in Your Art

Spend a few minutes watching one of Neil Gaiman’s speeches on YouTube, and he comes across as incredibly confident and articulate.⁸ The guy oozes British charm. There’s good reason why he often narrates his own audio books. Seriously – his narration of Neverwhere is like candy to my ears.

Gaiman’s confidence also translates to his art, crackling through every paragraph he writes. No matter how experimental the character or plot, he leaves an impression that he sincerely believes in his voice. Far be it for me to say for certain, but I suspect that a good deal of Gaiman’s confidence is innate, and the rest came from decades of difficult work.

Gaiman discusses the importance of believing in one’s art:

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.⁹

He has fostered this confidence since early in his career, even admitting in an interview that he lied about the magazine editors he worked with to land freelance writing jobs:

I have to confess that I lied appallingly. I listed all the people I’d like to write for, figuring that there was no way this editor was going to ring up every other editor in the world and say, ‘Has this guy ever written for you?’ Although what is very, very peculiar is now, looking back at it, over the next five years I did write for absolutely everybody on my list.¹⁰

Not that Gaiman recommends this career move – especially in our transparent age of ubiquitous social media. But his story illustrates a certain assertiveness that he carries with him no matter what he writes.

Many authors stick to one medium. They specialize in one (or maybe two) genres. Gaiman, however, defies categorization. He shifts confidently between mediums and genres. Consider his novels, comic books, film credits, and even song lyrics. Like the cult favorite film director Wes Anderson, Gaiman follows his obsessions.

This confidence has helped turned “Neil Gaiman stories” into a genre of their own. He is in a position most artists would kill for – being able to create whatever type of story that inspires him right now – simply because he has always been willing to experiment and stretch himself in new mediums.

One has to wonder how many of our creative blocks are self-imposed. What would you create if you had Gaiman’s confidence? What story, painting, or film speaks to your soul?

Don’t Be Afraid to Go Old School with Your Creative Process

Like most prolific creatives, Gaiman is less interested in the latest gadgets than the work itself. It’s all about doing what’s necessary to produce new material consistently – even if your process is different from most.

Because Gaiman’s writing process isn’t sacred to him, he’s willing to tweak it to optimize creative output. One of the most significant discoveries in his career occurred in 1999, when he decided to write Stardust in longhand instead of a word processor:

I wanted to inject the kind of feeling to recreate the kind of sentence structure, emotion, the whole thing people had in, say, the 1920s. I wanted a slightly archaic voice. Most of all, I didn’t want to do what I know that I do when I’m working on a computer.¹¹

Adopting an old school approach helped Gaiman stop tinkering with his first drafts while he was writing them: a major creative roadblock up until that point. It also forced him to think through every sentence more thoroughly, resulting in cleaner, sparser prose:

I was sparser. I would think my way through a sentence further, I would write less, in a good way. And when I typed it up, it became a very real second draft – things would vanish or change. I discovered that I enjoyed messing about with fountain pens. I even liked the scritchy noise the pen nib made on the paper.¹²

Gaiman has stuck to this method (first drafts in longhand, then typing it out on a word processor) ever since. There’s a lesson for us all here. Just because new technologies or tools are available, doesn’t necessarily mean we must use them. Experiment, track the results, and see what works best for you.

On the Genesis of Ideas

One of Gaiman’s perennial frustrations is trying to figure out a satisfactory response to the ever-popular audience question: Where do you get your ideas?

After decades of struggling, he finally decided to simply respond, “I make them up. Out of my head.”

This response leaves a lot of Gaiman fans disappointed. Perhaps they are expecting elaborate rituals, feverish brainstorming sessions, or some other creative magic.

Gaiman, however, shatters those myths. In his view, everyone is always coming up with ideas all the time. The difference is that creative people have trained their minds to notice when it happens.

It’s easy to assume that a great concept places you inches from the finish line in your next creative pursuit. But if you’ve created art for long, you know all too well that the execution is the important part. Here’s Gaiman’s take:

The ideas aren’t the hard bit. They’re a small component of the whole… And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you’re trying to build: making it interesting, making it new.¹³

One of his recommendations to capture ideas is to simply start thinking like a child would, by asking yourself questions like:

• “What if?” (you woke up with wings, your sister turned into a mouse, etc.)
• “If only…” (real life was like the Hollywood musicals, you could shrink yourself as small as a button, etc.)
• “I wonder…” (what she does when she’s alone, what my neighbor really thinks of me, etc.)
• “If this goes on…” (telephones are going to start talking to each other, automation will leave us all without jobs and nothing to do all day, etc.)
• “Wouldn’t it be interesting if…” (the world used to be ruled by cats, only a small percentage of the globe could speak, etc.)

To Gaiman, ideas come in three different types: images, people, or places. Once you have the kernel of a good one, you can water it by asking open-ended, what-if questions. This is how ideas become fully fleshed concepts, or in the author’s case, story plots.

In the age of clickbait and countless digital distractions, nothing quite puts the wind in my sails like encountering a true artist. You know the type. Someone who’s relentlessly focused on their craft, someone who doesn’t mind the hard work. A trendsetter, not a follower. A true inspiration.

Enter Wes Anderson.

You probably know him from films like The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom. It only takes a few minutes to realize you’re watching an “Andersonian” production. A distinctive style seeps through everything he directs. Plenty of primary colors. Brit pop and Meticulously-designed sets. Bill Murray.

Even though Anderson is relatively young (by a director’s standards), for decades his style has influenced countless film school graduates. Lurking beneath that visual flair lies invaluable lessons for any creative.

I wanted to understand what drove the man to create some of my all-time favorite films – and how he did it. Here are some of the key principles I distilled from a host of interviews and articles.

Plan, While Still Leaving Room for Improvisation

While viewing a Wes Anderson movie, one is struck by how every little detail is accounted for. Whether it’s the sets themselves, the actors’ wardrobe selection or even which pair of eyeglasses Anjelica Huston wore in The Royal Tenenbaums (they belonged to Anderson’s mother), nothing is left to chance.

All these details accumulate to create a self-contained world in every film Anderson directs. Everything seems so deliberate and planned that some critics have likened his films to doll houses or pop-up books.⁴ The claim: everything is so neat and stylized that it’s a poor reflection of reality.

Anderson makes no qualms about these artistic decisions. Ever since his directorial debut, Bottle Rocket, he has embraced a conspicuous style that separates him from every other director. This decision – whether to do your best to reflect reality or filter it through a style all of your own – is something every artist must make. Like the impressionists, Anderson isn’t afraid to “show his brushstrokes.”

That’s the kind of movie that I like to make, where there is an invented reality and the audience is going to go someplace where hopefully they’ve never been before. The details, that’s what the world is made of. Those are the paints.¹⁰

Attention to detail is a huge factor in creating Anderson’s signature style. That said, he’s well aware of the limitations of too many constraints, and allows stories to unfold organically during production:

My experience is when you’re making the movie, you’re in a kind of searching mode and you’re looking to discover things.¹¹

There’s wisdom for every creator here. Whether you’re a compulsive planner, an improviser, or somewhere in between, we can be open to unplanned discoveries.

Yes, the details matter. But if we’re too subservient to our plans going into the process, we might overlook some opportunities that arise while we create.

Remembering to Refill the Well

Creativity is a funny thing. Sometimes, the more successful you become, the harder it is to find time for the things that motivate you to create in the first place. You get so swept up in the next project that you forget about being a fan.

One of the seminal lines from Stephen King’s book, On Writing, is an admonishment for writers never to neglect the importance of being a reader. “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

This applies in Wes Anderson’s life as well. Inspired from a young age by directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Stephen Spielberg, and Stanley Kubrick, he always considered himself a fan of film. Consuming these masterpieces so voraciously motivated him to become a director.

I know who my inspirations have been, and how closely I’ve wanted to do something like this person, that person, and how many ideas I’ve stolen from these guys and how many things I’ve just literally recreated what other filmmakers did.¹⁴

Anderson doesn’t shy away from his struggle to remain a fan once success came knocking. Answering questions at the Rome Film Festival, he discussed the balancing act of finding time to create while still consuming others’ creations:

We spent all these years just absorbing all these things – reading, watching movies, gathering all the stuff that we wanted to do. There’s a tendency when you’re doing your own work, and your own work starts to take over …. What I try to do [now] is stay with it, keep looking and keep listening.¹⁵

Creativity is like breathing. The inhale is just as important as the exhale. If one simply creates, creates, and creates while losing connection with other artists, it’s difficult to keep the fresh ideas flowing.

Anderson is cognizant of the importance of refilling his “creative well.” He splits his time between New York and Paris, constantly researching and traveling often. He also makes time to discover new filmmakers he might have overlooked.

There’s no need to limit yourself to the medium you work in either. Simply by living and exposing yourself to interesting things – traveling, visiting art galleries, and so on – Anderson is able to keep his creative well nice and full. And so can you.

Follow Your Obsessions

Wes Anderson’s filmography encompasses a huge variety of themes. Bottle Rocket is about a bunch of slackers trying to pull off a heist. The Royal Tenenbaums is a portrait of a family of eccentric geniuses. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou chronicles the adventures of a Jacques Cousteau-esque figure. Moonrise Kingdom is a coming-of-age tale with first lovers.

None of these films fit squarely into a preconceived notion of genre. If video stores were still around, I wouldn’t be sure which section to look for them in. There’s drama, humor, and fantasy. It’s that mix that has turned Wes Anderson movies into their own genres.

How does he pull this off – and very successfully, no less?

By not getting caught up with the ideas of what a movie should be, and by following his obsessions. A voracious reader and traveler, Anderson has trained himself to remain receptive to any inspiration.

He scouted locations for Moonrise Kingdom in half a dozen regions, exploring a variety of islands in North America, absorbing different aspects that he liked before settling on a winner. Those elements made their way into the end product:

And at the opening of the movie, there is a playroom in the top of the house, where they play records, and that is a re-creation of a room in a house in Georgia. We took pictures while we were there and Adam built it based on that visit.¹⁶

Also consider how Anderson nurtured his idea for The Grand Budapest Hotel. He stumbled upon an old book one day by Stefan Zweig, a mostly forgotten author from Austria. Using Zweig’s story for inspiration, Anderson began an exhaustive process of scouting old European hotels and even meeting with members of an international guild of concierges.

It’s amazing how many of Anderson’s inspiration sources don’t seem to be “film related.” Even so, with his receptiveness to explore them, he develops fully fleshed out worlds and fascinating characters.

What are you obsessed with lately? Have you given yourself permission to follow it?

Put Your Heart Into It, and Let Things Work Themselves Out

Anderson has developed a reputation as a “director’s director,” someone who’s admired more for his art than his ability to dial up a commercial success. Films like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Fantastic Mr. Fox were – at least in financial terms – failures.¹⁷

It wasn’t until Moonrise Kingdom when Anderson experienced his biggest financial success. When asked about what made that film resonate with a larger audience than his other works, he seemed at a loss for words:

I’ve never had a movie I didn’t believe in, and I’ve never had any sense before the movie opens how it might do. With ‘Moonrise,’ it may be the subject matter or maybe it’s just more the atmosphere. I don’t have the slightest idea.¹⁸

This is some bitter advice that more creatives need to swallow. It’s impossible to manufacture a smash hit. No matter how diligently we study the trends, there’s still an element of chance. There are countless other mafia movies that aren’t The Godfather or Goodfellas.

Anderson understands this well. That explains why he’s just as proud as his less commercially successful films as the real moneymakers. Above all else, Anderson focuses on what he can control. He puts his heart into everything he directs – and tells the stories he knows he must tell.

There’s no reason to despair about a commercial failure, nor is there a reason to get too enamored by commercial success. The work is all there is.

So if you’re really responsive to when it’s well received, you make yourself more vulnerable to when it’s horribly received. You know, whatever path in between that you can just keep going straight down. That’s the safe place.¹⁹

We creative types are understandably eager to have our works resonate with audiences. But by focusing only on metrics we can control, we’ll stay sane and true to our visions.