Hard to get started

    It wasn't long before I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in the stuff in houses up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down mostly around Washington Square - artists and writers and so forth. Brainy coves.

    Corky, the bird I am about to treat of was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself, but as a matter of fact his score up to date had been nil. You see, the catch about portrait-painting - I've looked into the thing a bit - is that you can't start painting portraits till people come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until you've painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult, not to say tough, for the ambitious youngster.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)