After jumping in with both feet to the Authorial Darkside last week, I am going to throw myself on another writerly hand-grenade this week.
Art vs Commerce.
Among many arguments writers have engaged in over the centuries, none have raged harder and deeper than which of these is more important.
Art is all about passion. If you don’t have art then what is the point of writing.
Commerce means you can exist as a writer. If you can’t make a living off it how can you survive as a person let alone an artist.
To my way of thinking it is all totally subjective, based on who you are, and what you want to do with your writing. Is it just about getting out ‘the novel I have inside me’, or do you actually want to make a living at this?
For those with the comforts of a day job, where writing is a hobby or a daydream, the ability to have firm beliefs in everything being about art is entirely possible. They can talk at great length, how everything must be about passion, and art. People who don’t need to take into account pesky things like living and eating, can very well look down their noses at people who write to market.
Personally, I think people would be very surprised at the number of books that are written to market, mashing up genres to produce some very popular series that folks really probably think were entirely passion productions.
Very few authors will announce they wrote to market though (it tends to be whispered to other authors at conventions, or maybe a bit more loudly at the hotel bar), because that somehow implies that they are not invested in a project, and that they are filthy capitalists whoring out their muse.
Believe me, if you spend months and months in writing, editing and marketing a property, you are invested in it right up to the eyeballs. As to the muse, well I have never entirely believed in that comfortable imagery writers indulge in. Inspiration can come from any number of tiny details in day to day life, I don’t think it comes from anywhere otherworldly.
Here’s the truth of it. Many, many writers have had to walk away from writing, or even died while waiting for some commerce to come their way. My favourite poets died waiting to be paid for the work they did. (I always thought it was a cruel trick of fate that their best career move was shuffling off their mortal coil.)
So yes, the people who make their living off writing do not have the luxury of waxing philosophical about art. They make it about work. Craft and passion are damn useful, but the writer is the master of words, the words are not the master of him or her.
Art and passion are all very well, but books (at least the ones you plan to sell) must also be a commodity.
People on the art side, like to flog the commercial writer with the implication they are a sell out…but I think the real reason is, it makes them feel superior. Even if their book never sells enough for them to make even one car payment, they can at least fall asleep at night, knowing that they make ‘ART-DAMNIT’, unlike those filthy, successful people who actually sell their books.
So in short, you need both. Art is all very well, but no one wants to write a book that only their friends and family read. Anyone who tells you so is just plain out lying.
As for writing just commercially, with not one flicker of investment in the project. I tried it once…it is like pushing a stone up hill. I ended up pulling the eject seat on that short story, and I cannot imagine having to do that for a whole novel.
However, a passion project that I know is never going to sell, I also will not pursue. I have a virtual desk draw full of lost concepts that I might enjoy writing, but I know my time is better spent finding a story I can enjoy writing and sell.
So find a project that is both commercially viable and one that you have some passion and interest in. If anyone turns up their nose at your success then just understand…it’s helping them sleep at night knowing that they are totally more artistic and better than you.