In the midst of an excruciating breakup a few years ago, I did some of the best writing of my life. A couple of years before that, I faced two life-and-death health issues back-to-back. I finished one book and started another during that time and both were strong and satisfying. 

The concept of You, Inc. is a direct application of the idea of self-motivation instead of externally-imposed motivation, self-discipline in place of outside discipline, self-reinforcement in the stead of Third Party Validation.

The following comes from The War of Art, pages 97-98.

If an artist is an entrepreneur (and she is), then she too must navigate the passage from externally-imposed structure to self-imposed structure.

What are the virtues of an entrepreneur? What qualities of mind do you and I need if we are going to succeed as artist/entrepreneurs?

This is going to sound like a joke, but I swear it’s true.

My first agent was a gentleman named Barthold Fles. He was seventy-six; I was twenty-nine. One day over coffee Bart asked me, “How much is 427 minus one?”

It took me seven years to finish my first book. (I wrote about this in The War of Art.)