It's magic that anything works at all

A grounded, honest essay about managing disappointment in the creative life, and why success often depends on your ability to keep going when things fall apart.

Hi,

It’s a quiet kind of miracle when something actually makes it out into the world. You push this fragile, too-big dream through the clogged gears of life, and for some reason, sometimes, it works.

Those moments matter. They keep you going.

But they don’t tell the whole story…because the longer you stay in this business, whether you’re writing novels, building a platform, releasing comics, or trying to keep any creative machine running, the more likely you are to wake up disappointed by something. Something will have slipped through the cracks. Someone will have let you down. A thing you thought was solid will start to shake.

Every time you meet someone new, sign on for a project, release a product, or even move something one step forward, there’s a chance it won’t go how you hoped. And over time, the chances stack up. So do the little heartbreaks.

• At the beginning, you feel the weight of not enough. Not enough work, not enough sales, not enough attention. That’s its own kind of pain. B…