What a quiet painter can teach fiction authors about creativity (and building your business)
Why the business of writing isn't really about getting a book deal with a publisher
Do you think that art and business mix like water and oil?
Is Capitalism out to eat your soul and turn your creative work into a watered-down commodity for philistines?
Can you not create with all the pressures of marketing, sales, and entrepreneurship hanging around your neck?
Are writers already commodities, charging less and less for more work and more responsibilities while shark-like hustlers, lawyers, and C-suite execs take advantage of your skills and labor?
If you're a writer, odds are that you believe at least one of these.
Creative artists have always had a difficult relationship with the arts of getting paid.
The sensitive, quiet, introverted creative soul finds business, self-promotion, and even money a distraction from the art.
But you can't create if you don't have a roof over your head and food in your belly. Artists may be sensitive, but they've still got to eat.
Are writers caught in this hopeless contradiction?
Not really.
Anybody can learn how to sell. Marketing advice is free and readily available to anyone who wants to find it. You can pick up the basics of business by investing 30 minutes a day on Youtube.
The predicament of the clueless creative is not innate to the arts -- it's more often a simple unwillingness to learn.
Today's members only post is a deeper dive into a case study of an artist who built a thriving business out of his art (and a cautionary tale of how it can all go wrong).