Personally, I think that one of the main reasons behind cultural stagnation is that we’re all being told what we “need to do” to “be successful”, as if there’s a one-size-fits-all path to success, or a single definition of what success is.

Your story must have these beats, you must use these tropes, you must follow these formulae - if you don’t, you’ll never get picked up by a publisher or an algorithm, so nobody will ever see your work and you’ll fail. And the more people buy into that bullshit, the more true it becomes.

So seek out the weird, the unusual, the different, the marginalized, the un-popular. That’s where the interesting creative stuff is happening. Sure, a lot of it will be terrible, but think of it as panning for gold. Somewhere in there, if you persevere, you’ll find something truly special.

Great piece by Erik Hoel