Member-only story
And why you should ask the same question.
Say you’re a beat writer somewhere or at least known for writing on a given topic. You’re good at what you do. Perhaps you’re paid well. If you stick to what you know, it will work until it doesn’t. (And it will quit working sooner than you think.)
That’s the basic point of this blog post by Austin Kleon. I’ve had it in my head on a loop the last couple of weeks. Your creative career suffers when you exploit the topic that brought you your success. Seems weird but it’s true. You should instead divide your creative energies between exploration and exploitation.
Let’s deal with the latter first. The exploitation is the stuff you know and for which you can be paid. It’s your expertise. It’s your comfort zone. It’s writing or airing the stories you know you can do well. That stuff pays the mortgage. But it won’t buy you a better house.
To do that you need to explore. The exploration is reading widely, thinking deeply, about what else you could do. Kleon tells a great story of David Epstein, and what happened after his first book, The Sports Gene, became a best-seller.
I had so little idea that it would take on a life of its own that I left Sports Illustrated…
