Tricking Your Mind into Writing a Great Creator Bio

Why You Need a Great Creator Bio

In my mid-20s, when I was still tending bar at a fancy Williamsburg, Brooklyn restaurant, there was one wine I had a particularly easy time selling from a woman-owned and operated winery out of Italy.

The story goes that after WWII, three Italian sisters were left with little more than a couple of dead parents and a winery in total disuse and disrepair. They taught themselves how to farm and run a winery. In time, against all odds, they won awards and became standout winemakers in the country that invented standout wine.

It happened more than once that I would pour this wine for a guest, who’d later be joined by friends, and they would either ask me to tell the story again or they’d retell it themselves.

While the wine was good, I couldn’t sell any other glass or bottle as effortlessly. I realized that wine doesn’t sell wine; stories sell wine.

NB: I last sold this wine 10+ years ago, and it’s the only bottle I remember. There’s the power of story for you.

In a world of millions of artists who got their first taste of sustenance in the great bull market of 2021, few stand out. While it certainly makes sense that an artist would want their work to stand on its own merits, that attitude neither serves the collector nor the work. Without the winery’s founding story, it not only would’ve been more difficult to sell — it would’ve been more difficult to appreciate.

Consider your Creator Bio to be a complementary artwork to the primary pieces, just as the story of the winery is just a layer of meaning over the experience of tasting the wine. You can make your bio work subtly, creating a deeper appreciation for your work and making it something collectors want to talk about.

How to Trick Your Brain into Writing

Having worked with probably 100+ artists, I can testify that the only ones who’ve created compelling bios are those with staff — which leads me to believe that either:

They didn’t write it themselves, or
They had a fantastic enough story to stand out from the crowd and eventually hire staff.

It’s understandable if a visual artist would hold back when using writing — writing isn’t their medium. Even if it is, personal biography writing rarely comes naturally. That’s why the following instructions are pretty unorthodox — we’re getting around your defenses.

Your bio doesn’t have to be any one thing. It doesn’t require an exhaustive list of accomplishments or bona fides. You needn’t worry about listing your educational background or a paragraph about how you were drawing since you could pick up a pencil. (Please, artists, understand this: Everyone started drawing between 2 and 4 years old. It’s never interesting.)

The essential thing that your Creator Bio must do is speak to an underlying truth about you and your art to the kinds of people who are open to that truth.

So let’s get into some exercises…