Skip to main content

Say Goodbye to the Starving Artist Mentality

Image placeholder title

Last week, Robert Brewer was competing for 2010
Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere
.

(Robert is editor of
Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and runs the very popular Poem-a-Day
challenge
in April.)

As the final hours of voting ticked by, he
and another poet were in a dead heat for the win. It's one of those
moments when you wonder if it's appropriate to call grade-school friends
to go and vote.

You might wonder why I cared so much.

Robert is one of the most generous and good-natured people I
know, and he's not only an invaluable contributor to Writer's
Digest, but he's a beacon of inspiration and encouragement to poets in
the online writing community.

So, I wanted to see his efforts
publicly recognized and rewarded.

In those final hours, something
remarkable happened.

The CEO of F+W sent a late-night e-mail to
all employees, asking them to support Robert's run for poet laureate of the blogosphere.

That
last-minute call ultimately put Robert over the top, though the
competition had become so contentious by that point the contest
organizer decided to call a tie
.

It was a bittersweet end.
Robert's affiliation with Writer's Digest had been used as a black mark
against him, since he works for a business. In other words, because there is a
commercial interest supporting him, the company that benefits from
his presence should not support him because that's unfair.

Two thoughts I have on this:

  1. Robert is a passionate poet, and he is passionate about helping other poets. That's a constant no matter who employs him. In the
    U.S., we have a bad habit of assuming people are their titles. (Go read
    THIS post.
    ) Robert is not his title; he is not his employer. He is
    Robert.
  2. There's an implicit judgment that poets (or artists)
    who are "starving" are more authentic and deserving than those who aren't struggling. (Go read Dana Gioia's take on this.)

Christina Katz
and I discussed this phenomenon when we attended AWP a couple years ago:
the persistent myth of the starving artist, or that real writers
eschew commercial concerns and are ill-suited for the workplace.

Christina
responded by pitching a session for 2010 (that was accepted) on The
Prosperous Writer.

It is her mission (as well as mine) to do
battle with this idea that artistry/creativity
cannot be mixed with business.

Here's a post that has an
interesting slant on this: "The corporation strikes back."

And
another interesting interview comes to mind, with the Whole
Foods CEO, which was featured in the New Yorker. Here's a small snippet:

Mackey is
adamant, and not merely unapologetic, that his company—any company—can
and should pursue profits and a higher purpose simultaneously, and that
in fact the pursuit of both enhances the pursuit of each.

Read
more at The New Yorker site.

Holiday Fight Scene Helper (FightWrite™)

Holiday Fight Scene Helper (FightWrite™)

This month, trained fighter and author Carla Hoch gives the gift of helping you with your fight scenes with this list of fight-related questions to get your creative wheels turning.

One Piece of Advice From 7 Horror Authors in 2024

One Piece of Advice From 7 Horror Authors in 2024

Collected here is one piece of advice for writers from seven different horror authors featured in our author spotlight series in 2024, including C. J. Cooke, Stuart Neville, Del Sandeen, Vincent Ralph, and more.

How to Make a Crazy Story Idea Land for Readers: Bringing Believability to Your Premise, by Daniel Aleman

How to Make a Crazy Story Idea Land for Readers: Bringing Believability to Your Premise

Award-winning author Daniel Aleman shares four tips on how to make a crazy story idea land for readers by bringing believability to your wild premise.

Why I Write: From Sartre to Recovery and Back Again, by Henriette Ivanans

Why I Write: From Sartre to Recovery and Back Again

Author Henriette Ivanans gets existential, practical, and inspirational while sharing why she writes, why she really writes.

5 Tips for Exploring Mental Health in Your Fiction, by Lisa Williamson Rosenberg

5 Tips for Exploring Mental Health in Your Fiction

Author Lisa Williamson Rosenberg shares her top five tips for exploring mental health in your fiction and how that connects to emotion.

Chelsea Iversen: Follow Your Instincts

Chelsea Iversen: Follow Your Instincts

In this interview, author Chelsea Iversen discusses the question she asks herself when writing a character-driven story, and her new historical fantasy novel, The Peculiar Garden of Harriet Hunt.

Your Story #134

Your Story #134

Write a short story of 650 words or fewer based on the photo prompt. You can be poignant, funny, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story.

NovDec24_Breaking In

Breaking In: November/December 2024

Debut authors: How they did it, what they learned, and why you can do it, too.

Rosa Kwon Easton: On Fiction Helping Tell a True Family Story

Rosa Kwon Easton: On Fiction Helping Tell a True Family Story

In this interview, author Rosa Kwon Easton discusses the surprises she faced in tackling fiction for the first time with her new historical novel, White Mulberry.