Working like I don’t need the money
I’ve just read Autumn Barlow’s blog for this week, http://autumnbarlow.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/motivation-and-competition which reflects on writing issues and finished with the line ‘After all. This is just a job.’ Much of what she has to say I agree with, although I think about it in very different ways. I could write a small epic answering her point for point, but for the sake of everyone’s sanity, I’m not going there.
I’ve been involved in creative industries from various angles for about fifteen years now. Event organiser, performer, author, editor, publisher, reviewer, commentator, I’ve seen things from a fair few angles. I also know a great many creative people; amateurs, semi-professionals and full time people, some of whom are doing pretty well. I shall resist the temptation to name drop. Oddly enough, the really successful ones all tend to say the same sorts of things: Do it because it’s what you love. Do it because you have to. Make the art that you want to make and then see who responds. We’re not talking bright eyed young hopefuls here, we’re talking successful professionals who make a viable living from their creativity and who have done so for a long time. It would also be fair to say these are folk who work bloody hard – put in long hours, hone their talents, nurture their fanbases, show up at events, put heart and soul into what they do.
I’ve tried the ‘After all. This is just a job’ method. What it got me was misery, and no notable successes. My creativity is not a tap to be turned on and off at will, not a hose that can be pointed towards a lucrative market and sprayed liberally. There are things I am good at, and things I am less good at. The more time I spend forcing my creativity into shapes that are not natural for me, the less creative I become. I’ve tested this more than once. I can do it in short bursts, and then the inspiration dries up and the will to work goes away. The moment I treat it like it’s just a job, I am in danger of strangling the goose. It may not lay golden eggs, but any kind of egg is better than no egg.
If you are inherently sustained by the prospect of making money, the ‘just a job’ approach where you follow market trends, leap on bandwagons and try to be the next Dan Brown may work for you, but frankly, I think you’d be happier in the kind of job where returns are a bit more dependable. It’s also been my experience that people who are motivated by a desire to be rich and famous are usually not very good musicians, singers, artists, authors, dancers… not compared to the ones who are driven by passion and who are dedicated to their form.
Success as a creative person depends on dedication. If you’re always looking for the next lucrative bandwagon to jump on, you never really find out what you’re good at by developing your own skills. JK Rowling made YA fiction big. Think about what the YA fiction scene was like before Harry Potter. Yes, there have been a ton of Dan Brown conspiracy rip off books since his Da Vinci code came out, but he’s the one who cleaned up. It’s not the copycats who tend to make the money, it’s the innovators. Of course, if it’s just a job, then that niche may appeal.
When creative work is all about the money and all about the bottom line, the soul goes out of it. The world is full of examples of this. Cheap, disposable, forgettable, throwaway entertainment that kills a few hours and gives you very little. Good art should be entertaining, I’m with Ursula Le Guinn on that one. It should be moving, surprising, inspiring, uplifting, funny… all manner of things. It shouldn’t be a way to not be alive for a few hours. It should enhance life. I do get very angry about commercially led, box ticking rubbish designed to appeal to everyone, which appeals to no one. The market for books is not growing. The mainstream music industry has been on its knees for some time now. Sure fire hits tend not to be as sure fire as they are supposed to be, and if we imagine that creative industry can function without risk…. We’re on dangerous ground.
If you’re creative and you want to make a living, you need to be professional, you need to polish your work, build an audience, promote, all that. But if you aren’t doing it for love, you won’t get through that first winter when you can’t afford to heat the house and have to sit in cafés to write. That was JK Rowling. If it’s just a job, that’s the point at which you quit and go work in the nearest takeaway place. Thank the gods she didn’t, the world would have been much the poorer.
