An Audience of One

Reclaiming Creativity for Its Own Sake

By: Srinivas Rao, Robin Dellabough

Narrated by: Srinivas Rao

The creator of the Unmistakable Creative podcast makes a counterintuitive argument: By focusing your creative work on pleasing yourself, you can increase your productivity, happiness, and (eventually, paradoxically) the size of your audience.

Creating for your own pleasure--whether you're writing a novel, composing songs, or painting a landscape--can seem pointless. It's tempting to focus on pursuing money and fame, rather than the process itself. But as Srini Rao warns, creating then turns into a chore that can harm your self-esteem and suck the pleasure out of life, rather than being a source of joy.

Rao, host of the podcast The Unmistakable Creative, argues that we should counter this thinking by intentionally creating art for ourselves alone--an audience of one. In this book he shares the fascinating true stories of creatives who took this path, along with actionable tips and the research of creativity experts. You'll learn, for example:

How Oprah's intentional focus on her own work rather than the opinions of everyone else catapulted her into one of the most popular talk shows of all time.

How being process-driven can not only help you produce more work, but can make you happier outside of your creative time.

How to put together a creative "team of rivals" whose feedback can help you hone your craft and filter out useless feedback.

By playing to an audience of one, we can find more happiness, increased productivity, and a greater sense of community.

Great inspiration

Lots of great ideas and put together well for Artists to enjoy. will listen to over and over

Excellent Encouragement for Creatives!

This book is SO full of awesome advice for many areas in the life of a creative. If you are a visual artist, writer, musician or performer, this book could become a favorite as it has for me. I am SURE I will listen to it again. And most likely, I am going to also buy the Kindle version now so I can highlight it like crazy!

Srinivas Rao's voice a pleasure to listen to, though, so I di recommend this audible version as well.

If you need a boost of confidence, some encouragement or just great advice on how to maintain a thriving creative life, this is a book you may find helpful.

One Pebble

I find myself constantly chewing on the apples in this book! I believe passion fuels passion and it is clear that these authors have a zeal that’s contagious. I found the gems on productivity to be especially insightful. I didn’t realize how much of a distraction my social reflection was and how much I was conforming my creativity to the sake of others.

One pebble can change the current of things and ripple it throughout the masses, and I can finally see how much greener my own grass is. The moment I took off those social glasses, I started truly seeing that we shouldn’t be so caught up in what everyone else is thinking.
I think this book will inspire its readers to become that one pebble.

Outstanding Book for Creatives

As a creative I found this book most definitely valuable. It accurately identified some issues that I was personally going through as a creative. It also gave me outstanding advice as to how to self correct these issues. I enjoyed the book so much that I'm recommending it to all of my other creative friends.

Thank you. A great way to start my year.

I appreciated this and needed this in ways I cannot verbally express. You spoke from the heart. This will help many who are genuinely seeking self confidence, affirmation & freedom from the innumerable constraints. Thank you.