I came across something today that should motivate each and every artist out there.

I was reading an article about Tim Tebow earlier and the reporter was talking about how much sports media has grown since 2008. And in the article, he says this:

When I asked Tebow whether he was saving himself for marriage, Twitter was in its infancy, social media was more theory than reality. Every single person with a cell phone wasn’t yet a potential newsmaker armed with a more rapid news distribution system than the most advanced reporter in 2008.

Since then sports media has gone on steroids, gotten bigger, faster, but also wilder, more reckless, rumors pinwheel across social media more rapidly than ever before, truth and fiction duel in real time. Every picture that Johnny Manziel poses for at a bar or on the beach is immediately able to be distributed to the entire world and become a story.

And I have to say, those two paragraphs instantly yanked me from football land back to author land. Think about what those two paragraphs are saying from an author perspective.

Never before have the barriers been lower! There are no print editors at newspapers or magazines that you have to get through. No news producers to beg for time in TV land.

The people have all the power, and every single person with a cell phone is a potential newsmaker “armed with a more rapid news distribution system than the most advanced reporter in 2008.”

So, no matter what your art, we’re increasingly running out of excuses to not make it…

Stan R. Mitchell

Oak Ridge, Tenn.