I don't know what to tell you. You can't sit at a piano for the first time ever and play a sonata. You can't pick up a tennis racket for the first time and serve a 110MPH Ace.

You have to fuck up.

You have to be able to handle failing.

You have to love it enough to not get it right and keep on.

I was mostly being silly abt that amazing last moment-- although in Florida, the truth does always seem to find a way to be stranger than fiction ...

My takeaway: even an artist as talented as Rembrandt couldn’t perfectly predict or control what his audience found most interesting (or lurid) about a painting. But he could adapt and alter the work to fulfill his vision — a good thing to keep in mind while editing and revising. 4/4

The problem, the employee said, was people looking at the painting didn’t pay attention to anything but that chopped-off hand. The artist Rembrandt and his patron wanted their attention on the lesson, so he painted over the corpse’s stump with a new hand. 3/4

You’ll notice, the staff member said, that the dead man’s right hand is a slightly different color than his body. This is because originally the corpse had no right hand. Back then, autopsies were done on criminals. This man stole something, lost his hand and then was executed. 2/4

I loved hearing you read this at Worldcon. Chills!