The secret to creative breakthroughs | Victoria Tentler-Krylov | TEDxLosAltosWomen

Quick Overview

Victoria Tentler-Krylov recounts her journey from submitting nearly 1,000 naive illustration ideas that were rejected by The New Yorker to achieving success by cultivating an internal, undeniable "visual voice" that led to her work being accepted and ultimately changing her life and career trajectory.

Key Points: The speaker, Victoria Tentler-Krylov, initially submitted nearly 1,000 naive illustration ideas to The New Yorker, only to face rejection. The initial submissions were met with silence or rejections, with acceptance rates reportedly less than 0.1%. The turning point occurred when the New Yorker editor told her to "back off" from trying to please them and focus on her own internal, undeniable voice. Tentler-Krylov began creating art that reflected her own lived experience, such as an illustration comparing a hot dog vendor next to a complex wall of screens, suggesting a combination of the mundane and the complex. She realized that the key to success was developing a visual voice that was authentic to her, rather than trying to conform to external expectations. After creating an image depicting people releasing sky lanterns in a forest, which she considered her most special cover, she received confirmation that her voice was real and trustworthy.

Context: Victoria Tentler-Krylov, an artist and illustrator, shares her personal story about overcoming creative rejection, specifically from The New Yorker magazine, which covers cultural and political life. She frames her struggle around the difficulty of getting initial ideas accepted and how she ultimately found success by shifting her focus from external validation to internal authenticity, developing a creative voice that was truly her own.

Detailed Analysis

Victoria Tentler-Krylov details her long and difficult process of trying to break into The New Yorker as an illustrator, starting with submitting nearly 1,000 ideas that were mostly rejected or met with silence, noting the acceptance rate was below 0.1%. She describes the moment an editor told her she was trying too hard to please them and needed to pull back. This led her to realize that she needed to cultivate an internal, undeniable voice rather than trying to guess what others wanted. She began creating images that reflected her own visceral observations of the world—like contrasting a simple hot dog vendor with complex digital imagery—which felt compelling but were not conventionally beautiful. This internal shift was the breakthrough; she realized that if she truly loved an idea, she had to pursue it, even if it faced rejection. The ultimate confirmation of her authentic voice came when she created an illustration of people releasing sky lanterns in a forest, an image she felt was truly hers, leading to her first acceptance by the magazine and changing her career path.