John Green's brilliant advice to aspiring writers on making money and going viral

John Green is an American author known for books like The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns, and is engaged in a number of video blogging projects.

In an essay retrieved on Brain Pickings, Green reflects on why he loves the Internet and offers some invaluable advice to aspiring writers:

"Every single day, I get emails from aspiring writers asking my advice about how to become a writer, and here is the only advice I can give:

Don’t make stuff because you want to make money — it will never make you enough money. And don’t make stuff because you want to get famous — because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people — and work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice and like the gifts."

What keeps us from happiness, John argues, is our inability to fully appreciate ourselves:

"Maybe they will notice how hard you worked, and maybe they won’t — and if they don’t notice, I know it’s frustrating. But, ultimately, that doesn’t change anything — because your responsibility is not to the people you’re making the gift for, but to the gift itself."

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