Is the problem systemic, or individual?

In this episode, we sit with the messy middle. Creative industries are full of scarcity, gatekeeping, bad incentives, exploitation, and cooked economics. But if we only talk about the broken system, artists are left feeling powerless. And if we only talk about personal responsibility, we ignore the real structures making everything harder.

So where does that leave us?

We talk about making art on hard mode, the patronising advice successful artists give, why hope matters, and how artists can critique the system while still building lives, careers, and work they believe in.

Order Amie’s book We Need Your Art: https://www.amiemcnee.com/order-we-need-your-art-book-amie-mcnee
Read Amie’s Substack: https://substack.com/@amiemcnee

Welcome to the Jamesy and Amsy Q&A, in which we discuss high school romance, creative chemistry, business roles, blurred boundaries, editorial bluntness, Steam Deck timing, Space Story, travel chaos, alternative careers, and whether an ibis is from Egypt. It is not. We checked.

We talk about what it’s really like to work with your spouse when one of you is a vibes guy and the other is building probability models in his head. We get into how we make creative decisions, why we text each other business thoughts even when we’re in the same building, why travel wrecks our routines, and why collaboration can be both the greatest joy and the hardest part of our relationship.

Order Amie’s book We Need Your Art: https://www.amiemcnee.com/order-we-need-your-art-book-amie-mcnee
Read Amie’s Substack: https://substack.com/@amiemcnee

This episode is about saying: no, I cannot come to coffee at 12pm just because my calendar looks technically empty. I am busy being available to my art.

We talk about creative devotion, guilt, boundaries, people-pleasing, small business weirdness, the fact that no one understands what we do all day, and why creative labour often looks like wandering around, reading, staring into space, going to the gym, walking, thinking, resting, tinkering and occasionally fucking up.

We also discuss why people respect a traditional job more than a creative life, why devotion before success looks delusional, why you should not have to be Charli XCX before people leave you alone, and why artists may need to become just a little bit more diva-ish about the conditions their work requires.

Your creative time is not free time. Your art is allowed to come first.

Order Amie’s book We Need Your Art: https://www.amiemcnee.com/order-we-need-your-art-book-amie-mcnee
Read Amie’s Substack: https://substack.com/@amiemcnee

Welcome to the Creative Help Hotline. How can we help you?

In this Q&A episode, we answer your questions about being exhausted by muggle life, creating through depression and anxiety, losing momentum, comparing yourself to other artists, wondering why your family has not become your personal fan club, whether you need a degree to make art, how to make money from creative work, and whether success means you will be crushed under the admin boulder forever.

We also discuss a new alternative to the bare minimum strategy we have been married to, celiac superiority, making your own MFA, true fans, intuitive marketing, and remembering your power when gatekeepers start acting like they own your life.

Order Amie’s book We Need Your Art: https://www.amiemcnee.com/order-we-need-your-art-book-amie-mcnee
Read Amie’s Substack: https://substack.com/@amiemcnee

In this episode, we ask a strange and sincere question: could art help cure the manosphere?

We talk about lonely men, alpha influencers, Andrew Tate, online rage, economic hopelessness, shame, identity, patriarchy, creativity, and why so many young men are being sold power by people who are profit from their pain. We explore the idea that the manosphere gives men a poisonous identity, while creativity could offer them something better: community, vulnerability, agency, emotional range, progress, purpose, and a way to make meaning that does not depend on dominating anyone else.

This is not a neat conversation, and it is not an excuse for misogyny. It is an attempt to ask what might happen if more men were invited into art, softness, self-expression, and the power of making art.

Order Amie’s book We Need Your Art: https://www.amiemcnee.com/order-we-need-your-art-book-amie-mcnee
Read Amie’s Substack: https://substack.com/@amiemcnee

In this episode, we talk about creative energy, burnout, routines, self-preservation, and what it takes to build a sustainable creative life.

We explore why burnout is not always caused by doing too much. Sometimes it comes from working against your own rhythms, ignoring your needs, fighting your process, or trying to create in conditions that make you feel unsafe, depleted or disconnected from yourself. We talk about front-loading creative work, trusting low-energy days, mean inner critics, sensory needs, routines, and the real strange niche conditions that allow us to make art.

This is an episode for anyone who has ever felt embarrassed by the amount of structure, comfort, quiet, routine, coffee, sleep, water, lighting, solitude or control they need in order to function.

Order Amie’s book We Need Your Art: https://www.amiemcnee.com/order-we-need-your-art-book-amie-mcnee
Read Amie’s Substack: https://substack.com/@amiemcnee

What if you didn’t have to know everything before you were allowed to speak?

In this episode, we talk about the way artists and thinkers self-censor when they’re afraid of being wrong, mocked, misunderstood, or exposed as “not expert enough.” We discuss over-researching as a form of perfectionism, the gatekeeping of big ideas, and why making things simple is not the same as dumbing them down.

We also talk about work, economics, class, gender, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, and the kind of future artists might be brave enough to imagine if we stopped waiting for permission from the serious people. Your ideas are allowed to be alive before they are flawless.

Order Amie’s book We Need Your Art: https://www.amiemcnee.com/order-we-need-your-art-book-amie-mcnee
Read Amie’s Substack: https://substack.com/@amiemcnee

What if rejection wasn't bad news? What if chaos, disappointment and rejection could become part of your creative power? What if the more 'bad stuff' that happens to you, the more brilliant you become?

In this episode, we explore the idea of the anti-fragile creator: the artist who does not simply endure difficulty, but learns, adapts, expands and becomes more themselves because of it. We talk about rejection, self-publishing, the fragility of creative industries, the danger of needing permission, and why artists need curiosity more than thick skin.

Order Amie’s book We Need Your Art: https://www.amiemcnee.com/order-we-need-your-art-book-amie-mcnee
Read Amie’s Substack: https://substack.com/@amiemcnee

We're recording from a hotel room with questionable acoustics and a very concerned James. Welcome to the Hotel Season!

In Episode 1, Amie makes the case that if you want to be a serious artist, you need to be an equally serious consumer, not just of your own genre, but of everything you want to see more of in the world. We get into why consuming great work is more useful than craft content, the stress of reading Robin Hobb when you're trying to write your own novel, how to have a genuinely good scroll on social media, and why the attention you give is the culture you're actually building.

Be OUR favourite consumer, READ We Need Your Art: https://www.amiemcnee.com/order-we-need-your-art-book-amie-mcnee

We're back!

Topics:

Creating while travelling/busy

The importance of confidence in your own work

Whether James' justice streak makes his life harder (feat. sauan etiquette)

And lessons from the biggest year of our life

I Don't Want a Job, the book, is available for the next two weeks only! Also available, cool t-shirts, a masterclass with Amie, and signed copies!

Read the original essay here

We take you on a journey from Amie's first painful attempt to write a book to now, Amie's settled routine as a professional author, with all the steps along the way.

Pre-order To Kill a Queen now

Join Amie in Barcelona for a book event on Friday November 7th!