How To Open Yourself Up For Your Big Break

It was July of 2017. I was 23 and had just graduated from the Parsons School of Design, where I majored in illustration. My younger sister was about to have a baby, and I found myself grappling with what kind of person I wanted to be for this little human and who I wanted to be professionally.

I knew I needed to land a good job. My mother and maternal grandparents raised me and my sisters in a relatively low-income household in Brooklyn, NY. Following college graduation, there was little room to make mistakes or time to waste when it came to earning money. I spent most of my time applying to tons of different roles online and waiting for responses.

One afternoon, I was on Twitter taking a quick break from the job hunt when I decided to tweet at a filmmaker named Matthew Cherry. I remember pacing around my bedroom, reading and rereading drafts aloud to my twin sister before bringing myself to hit send. I was a big fan of Hair Love, Cherry’s Kickstarter-funded animated short that depicts a Black dad doing his daughter’s hair for the first time. While I didn’t have money to support the campaign, I’d been following its progress and wanted to help in any way that I could. Since I had recently finished my senior thesis, an illustrated children’s book, I decided to send Cherry a tweet offering my illustration help and attaching a couple snapshots of my work. He had more than 74,000 followers, so I wondered whether he would even see my message, let alone respond.

But 40 minutes later, he tweeted back at me. While he shared that he already had an artist lined up for the Hair Love project, he gave me and my work a really kind shout-out and said he knew we’d work together in the future. Naturally, I hyperventilated.

I figured that was that, but it turns out that a woman who had seen the Twitter exchange had also passed it along to her literary agent friend, Brent Taylor.

Taylor emailed me the next day asking to see more of my work. So I sent him the two children’s books I’d worked on for the past two years, and we scheduled a time to talk. He told me he was not only interested in my work but in signing me to his agency. Fast-forward to the present, and I’m currently in the process of bringing to life When Autumn Comes, an illustrated story of two sisters inspired by my relationship with my real-life twin and our mutual love of skateboarding.

I realize landing a book deal on Twitter isn’t something that happens to a whole lot of people (and I certainly never imagined it’d happen to me). But, above all, the experience has helped me embrace the idea that opportunities really can come when you least expect them. Here are a few ingredients to opening doors and creating your own luck.

1. Keep at your craft.

Keep creating — even when you think no one will ever see your work or on those days when you think you absolutely suck. Counterintuitive as it may seem, pushing through negative thoughts can lead to something bigger and better (and ultimately make you a stronger person). This also applies to working through roadblocks. After discovering my love of children’s books in college and realizing I wanted to learn to illustrate them, I enrolled in a few classes to hone my skills. That first year was so terribly rough. I thought I was better than I actually was, which led me to rush all of my work and take some really brutal critiques. It wasn’t until I started studying people who had already become masters within the field and got an internship at a major publishing company that I really started taking the time to get better.

2. Look for the through lines.

Growing up, I didn’t have a single dream job. My twin and I would pretend to be news anchors, TV stars, and professional dancers. Before I went to college, I really wanted to write for the menswear site Four Pins. While my dreams have evolved and changed, I have come to notice that one thing has always stayed the same: My desire to tell stories. Your ambitions may take many different forms, but they likely have something in common. Look for that, and stay close to what you truly value and want to accomplish.

3. Strive for balance (but don’t beat yourself up when it’s hard to find).

In addition to working on the draft of my book, I now work fulltime as a designer at Jopwell, where I create visuals across a bunch of different mediums and departments to support the career advancement of Black, Latinx, and Native American students and professionals. Striking a balance between my fulltime job, the book, my family and friends, and every other part of my life is a constant challenge. I think the most helpful tool anyone can have when trying to achieve balance is patience. It’s a tough journey, and the best thing you can do is be honest about it. I’m still learning this myself, taking it one day, hour, and minute at a time.

4. Don’t buy into “overnight success.”

When I got my book deal, I cried. I was sitting in my living room by myself, and the tears just started rolling down my cheeks. I truly could not believe it. But even though things unfolded quickly after I sent that first tweet, I didn’t find success overnight in the way that it can sometimes appear others have when they find themselves at the center of a viral internet moment. Looking back, I graduated high school without much of a career roadmap. I delayed going to college for two years before deciding to study art, and it has been a rollercoaster ride of successes and failures ever since. When I was 16, for example, I won a national poetry competition and collaborated with some of the most inspiring young writers in the country. Then I developed the world’s worst case of writer’s block, and I didn’t write for five years after that. It’s easy to get jealous of other people’s success or assume their experiences have been a breeze, especially if that's how it looks on social media. But you rarely have the full picture. Get comfortable with the hustle and forget the notion of “overnight success.”

5. Constantly think back to what — and who — drives you.

When I was in college, I was driven by my need to do better than my parents. My dad was a typical starving artist at my age, and my mom was so shy and fearful that she struggled to go after her dreams. I knew I didn’t want either of those fates, so I pushed myself. I would write and sketch often, but I also surrounded myself with people who were running the same race as me: fellow first-generation college students working hard to create new opportunities.

Now, my baby nephew is a big motivator. He’s less than a year old, and he’s my favorite person on this planet. I want him to be proud of me. I also find a lot of strength and inspiration in my close family and friends.

Finally, I’m inspired by little Black girls whose stories have yet to be told. I once was one, and when I get home from work and am so tired that I don’t even want to think about working on my books, these are the people and things I think about to help me stay motivated and push through resistance.

6. Shoot your shot.

Don’t be afraid to connect with people you think wouldn’t notice or respond to you. You never know whose eye you’re going to catch. I sent out a tweet on a whim figuring I had nothing to lose, and I never could have imagined the opportunities it would create for me.

Take the risk, and always, always, always be prepared for your blessings.