My takeaway: even an artist as talented as Rembrandt couldn’t perfectly predict or control what his audience found most interesting (or lurid) about a painting. But he could adapt and alter the work to fulfill his vision — a good thing to keep in mind while editing and revising. 4/4

The problem, the employee said, was people looking at the painting didn’t pay attention to anything but that chopped-off hand. The artist Rembrandt and his patron wanted their attention on the lesson, so he painted over the corpse’s stump with a new hand. 3/4

You’ll notice, the staff member said, that the dead man’s right hand is a slightly different color than his body. This is because originally the corpse had no right hand. Back then, autopsies were done on criminals. This man stole something, lost his hand and then was executed. 2/4

I loved hearing you read this at Worldcon. Chills!

I thought the same thing when I had the urge to add six emojis to the end of that post 😂. (Is that one enough? No? Here you go. 😬😜)

And not just because it gives you confidence. Because it makes you see specific things you hate, or are just overdone, so you go do the opposite and think of better alternatives and truly write the book only you can write!