The Girl Never Made Mistakes, But the Author Did: Mark Pett

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My guest for Episode #66 is Mark Pett, an “authorstrator”– he's the author (and illustrator) of children's books including the incredibly delightful and meaningful book The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes.

Before writing his books, he created the syndicated comic strips “Mr. Lowe” and “Lucky Cow.”

In the episode, Mark shares his “favorite mistake” story about his early days as a political cartoonist, trying to find work and mistakenly submitting a cartoon that was too close to another artist's cartoon that was already published. A Pulitzer Prize cartoonist warned him about “borrowing” ideas from his influences — it was an honest inadvertent mistake, but he was “mortified” and he learned from it. Here is a blog post of mine that I mentioned, about “imitate, integrate, and innovate.”

We also talk about his book, which was powerful reading for me as an adult. I've dubbed it “the official book of the podcast” and I've been giving away copies to guests and friends of the show. We talk about perfectionism, growth mindset, and more.

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Quotes:

"He was calling me out on borrowing extremely heavily from these cartoonists that I was influenced by.

"I see a lot of anxious kids in the world today, as I was, when I was a kid, who just are terrified of making mistakes or who, you know, when they draw something, it needs to be just right. It needs to be perfect. And I could relate to that."

"There is no perfect score in art or life."

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