Perception of The Arts

The Arts. It’s those unconventional fields that us somewhat lazy individuals decided we’d pursue instead of the lovely medical, law, science or engineer fields. And you better believe we pay for it every day. Of course we do.
I’m not referring to paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for our education or spending another four years after college in a specialty school to verify our skill. In fact many of us didn’t even go past the wonderful era of high school – those teachers bossed us around enough. We just knew we had a gift – a gift to share with the world, in some way, shape or form.
We were pretty much told by plenty of family members that we needed a “real” job, something more secure, something with benefits, something that makes us QUALIFIED to be a part of this thing called life.
But we pay for it when we launch our successful businesses. Those writing, graphic design, interior design, makeup artistry, music label businesses and watch individual after individual curl their lips up at our prices. Turn their noses up at how easy it must be and ask why it costs so much.
We pay for it when we are told by people how “anybody can do that”, yet they found their way to our websites, Google plus accounts and our twitter pages, frequently letting us know how much they’d love to work with us.
And even after sending an email inquiry with all the details of the project, they somehow skipped over the “prices” or “request a quote” page that conveniently lies in between our “services” page and our “contact me” pages. We were upfront. They tried to enter through a back door.
But we stand up for ourselves every day when we don’t budge. You see, we love our art, our “unconventional” jobs and we explore new ways to reinvent ourselves every minute we’re breathing. As a writer, it’s US who can get inspired by just walking into a subway station or a supermarket and write something so profound that even Shakespeare would ping us if he were living in this digital age.
Writers, stand your ground. Build your portfolio the best way you can, but remember, regardless of what they think of you – you hold the key to how much you will walk away with – because you know just what you are bringing to the project. You know that you are going to dig deep into some well inside your soul and give your client the best grit you have.
You’re going to research the mess out of every search engine, make calls and ask your client a million questions until you know you have exactly what’s needed to give them a final project that will make them refer you to all of their friends, including those that aren’t in your niche, because you’re good.

And you are continuously reading, writing and studying what’s out there in your niche, writing special reports and keeping up with the changes that happen every two minutes in this industry called copywriting. At the end of the day, writing is an art. It’s one of the greatest. Own it. Hone it. And win. But win big.