1."Don't quit your day job!" 2."If it ain't broke , don't fix it !" Thanks , Craig .I love writing . Friends know I love to talk ,and writing can be an extension of that . However , knowing a few writers over the years , their struggle to survive is way harder than visual artists . The arts generally have "palace guards" .In visual arts like painting and sculpture ,it's the gallery system .If a gallery is not convinced you will make them rich ,you will never hang in one . In the last decade , artists have done an end-run around the gallery system , displaying directly at the quickly- multiplying art fairs .There are established shows at Prescott , Park City and Durango .I know there are several big ones in California .
Writing is harder . Publishers have total control over exposure . The competition is intense . A good tale is of William Kennedy ,who wrote the acclaimed "Albany Trilogy" .One was "Ironweed" ,which won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a movie . After years of rejection letters ,Kennedy gave up .His wife took up the cause and found a publisher ! It's an oft-told story , unfortunately . Many great novels were repeatedly rejected . Also , as Kurt Vonnegut said in a lecture I attended , it is far harder to get published now ,with far fewer magazines publishing fiction and the massive consolidation of publishing houses . The proliferation of non-fiction titles like (auto)biographies ,tell-alls ,self-help , political commentary and even religious-focused books have crowded fiction off the shelves for the last three decades .
I (barely) started a novel .No , it's not about trains ,it will be about artists in an art colony .Artists are intelligent ,interesting people .They have their different foibles . Since creative process is a solitary one , artist are often not great at dealing with other people (like customers). Writers are even more so .They tend to be private and professorial . Writers , therefore ,rely heavily on agents to sell their work . A railroad novel? As a railroader once pointed out , "who would read a novel about railroaders?" However ,if I make it that far , my second novel would be about a preserved railroad . In the mean time I will persevere with painting . This long recession has really taken its toll on the art business , and I too have watched my sales free-fall in the last four years . Being in any of the arts is a great challenge ,a calling ,and there is great freedom in that lifestyle . It is also an often frightening struggle , and accepting that is part of the creative process .
