Success is like a White Tiger

Success is like a white tiger: random, ferocious, and beautiful.

Once upon a time I was a member of DeviantArt. I still am, come to think of it (anyone still use that site?) Most of those drawings date back to high school, because I was the sort of kid who liked posting artwork. It helped encourage me to draw more, and that was always a good thing. Being in high school, I was very small fries, and I was excited if a drawing got two hundred views. Most didn't.

Then I drew this tiger(link to DA). I didn't do anything different than my usual routine of drawing a picture with an eye turned to some quality movie, like T2. I did nothing out of the ordinary, but the tiger turned into something special. Perhaps it was that people confused it with a photo when viewed as a thumbnail or perhaps because it made an attractively ferocious thumbnail, but it set itself off on a juggernaut run. It was an exception to the hundred-view rule. It was viewed over 67,000 times and had over 1000 favorites.

This is how art and writing work. It's random as hell. You do your thing, and sometimes you feel lucky to get fifty people read it. Sometimes it just turns into some weird juggernaut, and everyone sees it. You will never know when when it will happen or why it will happen. But it can and does. When it does happen, you'll never quite know why.

Success is like a white tiger: that snow-camouflage mutant of nature. You never know how it came to be or if it will maul you. But it is a beautiful, powerful, and ferocious thing. So keep drawing, keep writing. And sometimes the tiger comes.