You Do Not Need To Consumed By art
We like the idea of an artist destroyed by their talent. It’s part of the cultural myth we build up around art and writing, designed to move the conversation away from it being work one expects to be compensated for, much like conversations about muses and inspiration and creativity as a powerful force. It leads too all sorts of bad habits. The biggest of which is the decision that a artists needs to be a artists twenty-four-seven. To stop producing, for whatever reason, is a sign that you’re not truly talented and instead just engaging in hack work. This is why the YOU MUST WRITE EVERY DAY crowd are so loud and so prevalent among writing advice. I’m thinking about this today, after reading Laura Vanderkam’s post about the writing life and playing the long game (two topics pretty near and dear to my heart): As for making money while writing books, I have never believed that book writing needs to be all-consuming.
