Advice from the Masters: Steve Martin

Aug 20, 2014 | Better Writing

I have no basis for this, but I’ve always thought of Steve Martin as a writer who happened to do other things. He acted in one of my all time favorite movies, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, beloved of anyone who’s done much business travel. He also wrote one of the best memoirs ever, Born Standing Up.

The following quote is from that book. It’s valid for writers and painters and neurosurgeons as much as for standup comedians.

“Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night.”

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