September 13, 2020
Are You a Writer or an Artist?
Most fiction writers would like to think of themselves as artists. To be an author is to be an artist, right? Well, no; not necessarily. The question “are you a writer or an artist” might corner some of you. Perhaps you resist it.
“Surely”, you might say, “one can be both a writer and an artist”. Again, the answer is no, not necessarily. And mind you, I don’t mean that you might be writing nonfiction.
There are untold numbers of fiction writers out there who think they’re artists. Remember that short-lived meme that began with a statement – let’s take “I’m a writer” as our example – then continued with a series of photos, captioned like “What my mom thinks I do”, “What my friends think I do”?
It then ended with “What I really do”. And here’s where the problem lies. What you really do is often in conflict with what you think you do.
If you feel brave enough to discover something about you as a writer (or an artist) – self-delusion is a viable strategy for some people – by all means, read on.
A Writer or an Artist? Seven Questions to Figure It out
Can I tell whether you’re a writer or an artist? No. But you can, after you ask yourself the following seven Why seven? Why not six or eight? So, here is a bonus question, to make it eight: Do you question what you are given, or are you happy to go along with the guidelines of others? questions.
- What’s more important, to be read by 100,000 people who misunderstood your novel, or by 10 who “get it”?
- Pick an option: You sell a million copies of a mediocre book, or 10 copies of the masterpiece you’ve been aiming for your whole life.
- What’s preferable, 100 5-star “reviews” that are pointless, or a single 3-star review that objectively points out shortcomings in your work?
- You know for a fact that a certain scene/chapter/section of your novel will be received negatively because people won’t see the brilliance that you already do. You: a) let it be as it is; b) change it a bit, compromising between what you like and what the audience might prefer.
- You face rejection after rejection by literary agents or publishers. You a) spend endless time (and perhaps money) online on courses, tutorials, workshops, support forums, etc.; b) you write.
- You have a week’s time and $2,000. You a) travel to a Greek island with your loved one and experience once-in-a-lifetime sights, sounds, flavors, and sensations; b) rent a cabin in the middle of a forest, by a beautiful pond, and you decide to finally work on that long-forgotten manuscript of yours.
- Pick a citation (hell, let’s make it your epitaph): a) A man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory – and very few eyes can see the mystery of life; b) The road to success is not easy to navigate, but with hard work, drive and passion, it’s possible to achieve the American dream.
The Subjectivity of an Answer
Needless to say, don’t expect me to actually answer these questions for you. I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you “if you had more A’s it means this, if you had more B’s it means this”. You can figure it out, if you’re honest to yourself. That’s part of the beauty, too, I guess. You’re answering subjectively, but it can still be correct.
On the other hand, whereas some of the questions might appear “easy” (that is, it’s relatively straightforward to figure out which reply refers to being a true artist), others might trouble you.
And yet, I still won’t answer for you. However, I’ll leave a hint in the caption of this photo, which I wanted to add because I referred to Greek islands, the best place on planet Earth – more subjectivity; but is there anything but subjectivity?
In that order
Artistry Is a Binary Condition
In other words, you can’t be “a bit of an artist” or a “part-time artist”, the way you can’t be “a little bit pregnant” (with apologies to Hegelians out there).
If you’re agonizing over sales or reviews, if you’re polishing an email to a literary agent for hours or days, or if you rewrite your novel again and again trying to incorporate audience feedback, then you’re not an artist.
You can still be a writer, perhaps an excellent one, but you’re not an artist. For an artist – especially an excellent artist – life is too important to be about such frivolities.
Artists simply don’t care about their audience. Artists don’t even bother entering the whole process of finding an agent, a publisher, or anything remotely related to marketing. They’re too busy creating to be annoyed by such meaningless endeavors.
To be an artist means to smoke the only copy of your manuscript – ten years’ worth of work – because you ran out of tobacco paper, shrugging your shoulders and thinking “so what, I know I wrote it”.
For the rest of us, it’s a continuous struggle between what we are and what we think we are.
9 Comments
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It’s too much work unless you’re an artist. There are far easier ways to make money – and I did fine on that side with hard science until I got a mystery disease and that life ended abruptly and permanently. Luckily for me, it is now allowing me to write as I please. Many other ways could have provided the same facility; it is good to have it been my former life – which I miss terribly.
My epitaph? Died trying.
Don’t seem to be able to give up. Not yet, anyway. It gets harder as you get older.
But, on the flip side, I have NO desire to be ‘vetted’ by the traditional publishing industry, which seems to think it is the only proof of artistic merit AND commercial viability, but is every day more into ‘more of the same.’ I understand the need to be a business, but not one with Manhattan real estate costs. And snobbery.
My goal: to be well enough known that obscurity doesn’t block enough people reading to provide the ‘judgment of history.’
That’s the only level playing field I trust.
Well, er, uh, how and where do I begin. Have you ever been asked, “Can you walk and chew gum at the same time?” I’m one of those who can do both, write and art both. No, none of my work , painted, drawn or written, are masterpieces. Yes, I have received good compliments on both, and not just from my family members. I guess I don’t live in a dichotic or binary world. Thankfully my world is full of brilliant, dynamic colors, whether on canvas or the written page. Fortunately, I’m lucky. It has taken me most of my 80 years to come to terms with what and who I am, and I’m still working on it since life is dynamic, not static. Good luck on your journey. 😉
Just sayin’ you know.
Thank you both for your interesting thoughts!
I guess I must be an artist because I write only for the pleasure that the creative process gives me. Here is a memory I cherish: Mostly submerged in the pool of the local YMCA I was trying to figure out how I can use my Time Scope to do tracking backward, which I knew it couldn’t do. And then the simple idea hit me: what If I jump back one day and then, from there, I track forward. It was idioticly simple, yet it made my plot work. I have hundreds of memories like this in which I worked out something that stumped me for days, even weeks. After I finished my novel, vowing never to do it again because it is just too much work – these are the moments I start missing after a while. I was told it’s like that with women after the birth of their first child – they forget the pain and crave the experience.
These kinds of “a-ha” moments provide much of the enjoyment in writing. Maybe in life in general, too. There are plenty of serendipitous discoveries in the history of science, as you well know 😉
I fully agree, Chris, though I’d not considered the distinction before. Thanks for that. One thing though – you can buy a cheap yacht, sail the Aegean, and write in tavernas and cafes. That’s what I do, anyway 😉
That would definitely be the best of both worlds 😉
Like art itself, this take is subjective. To say that artists don’t think about their audiences with such absolute certainty is incorrect. I have spent 25 years in the arts, have known and worked closely with Pulitzer, Pen/Hemingway and Booker Prize winners and I can say with absolute certainty, that an audience reading their work, and having that audience moved by it in some way, means something to them. Not every artist wants to be tortured. Not every artist wants to be poor. Nice thing are nice. And almost every single artist I’ve ever met (myself included) wants to be loved, and the ones that say they don’t are fuckin’ lying. I agree that one can’t be “a bit of an artist” but your take on what makes an artist just doesn’t hold water with my experiences.
All my takes (i.e. posts) are subjective and – perhaps in an exercise in meta-processes, considering the present topic – without a claim to be useful (or even interesting) to anyone but myself.
You are very right in questioning the (perhaps misleading) conviction I present in this text – in the sense that questioning this-is-how-it-should-be-dones is the very foundation of art, though may I point out a certain delightful contradiction in your own argument, with reference to “I can say with absolute certainty”, a couple of lines after criticizing “such absolute certainty”.
The problem isn’t with artists (here we deploy the term more liberally) enjoying it when someone loves their work. The problem is when artists adapt their work so that it’s loved by an audience. And where do you draw the line between what the so-called artist makes and what others (audience, publishers, society, capitalist production) do?
What this post – a deliberately provocative one – attempts to portray is that writing-as-art and writing-as-a-profession (or even writing-as-a-social-activity) are very different processes, with diverging dynamics. Either side of the continuum (and hopefully the paradox/contradiction I’m presenting is evident) is largely idealistic, in the sense that, by my definition, there are very few pure artists and very few pure “sellers”.
The rest of us, struggle in between. The degree of struggle depends on our convictions.
Many thanks for your comment, I enjoy it when someone disagrees with a post, because it inspires me to rethink what I’ve written and put it in perspective, amend it, or even abandon it.