Darius Kazemi's XOXO talk, in which he explains how he became a successful lottery player, is a brilliant send-up of the "how I succeeded as an artist" talk.
Kazemi's point is that most people who set out to earn a creative living fail, and that the thing that distinguishes the successes from the failures is a combination of luck (winning the lottery) and persistence (buying a lot of lottery tickets). This is a hugely important and vastly underappreciated point — you can try and try and try and never succeed, through no fault of your own (but the more you try, the more chances at success you have).
(via Metafilter)
