Is It Work Or Is It Art?

How we approach creativity - false binaries and balance

Hi beautiful creatures,

This post is coming to you from an Extremely Dreich day, Scotland is opting out of summer this year and I am having many feelings about it, most of them unprintable. I know I promised a book reccs post, or a workshop post or something else I’ve forgotten, but I am low on spoons and this is the particular brain noodle that’s been noodling for the past day or two so this is what you’re getting!

First a writing update: I handed in The Salt Oracle to my editor, which was a huge relief to my poor frazzled editing brain. So I’ve started in earnest the research and planning for a new shiny project - although mostly I’ve been attending the truly wonderful It’s Strange Up North event in Leeds and recovering from that!

Now then.

There was some chat in one of my writing groups recently about needing to love your writing and in fact, why do it if you don’t love it, it’s Art not Work, etc. It was an interesting, nuanced chat but it reminded me of … less nuanced takes along similar lines. I’m sure you’ve seen them - posts that appear online every now again, alternating neatly between two extremes:

1. IT’S ART - You do it for the passion, nothing else matters and if you aren’t enjoying it then you aren’t ARTING right and you should stop. (Which is deceptively similar but unrelated to this frequent refrain - if you aren’t enjoying it then publishing is evil and you should self-pub).

2. IT’S WORK - Writing is a job and you need to quit moaning, sit your arse down and get the words on the page, else you’re just a tinkerer and aren’t serious.

To be fair they’re usually (but not always) phrased more softly than this, but the message is generally the same. And whenever these posts appear online, they tend to ellicit a matching binary of responses because god but the internet does love to be reductive. The reality, as I think most of us know, lies in that ‘porqué no los dos?’ gif. Both statements can be true, and both can serve as useful reminders on different days - a hug one day, a motivational kick the next!

Writing is creative, and creative pursuits don’t fit the same mould as, say, science or shopkeeping or accountancy. To write requires a brain that is fed a diet of inspiration, rest, thoughtfulness, self-awareness, humanity, and those things are best gained away from the keyboard. To write also requires a willingness (and lest we forget, degree of privilege) to dedicate hours, days, months to a task that may or may not bear any material fruit so you need to find some fulfilment in the act itself otherwise you will likely never get as far as that apple tree.

Add to that the truth that publishing rarely pays a decent wage and never provides stability, and honestly, if you don’t love it why on earth would you subject yourself to that!? You could probably earn more stacking shelves (although that’s equally bad for your spine and you have to deal with shudder people every day), so to expose yourself to rejection, criticism, or worse - invisibility, over and over again for years can only possibly be worthwhile if you carry a determined love for this mad endeavour.

But also, authors have deadlines! We have X months to turn in a vaguely book-like book and we won’t do that if we close Scrivener the moment the words become recalcitrant. Our income and our future career depend on us treating deadlines and craft seriously, giving this work the same space and respect we’d grant a ‘real job’. And sometimes that means getting on with it on the days when it’s really not at all fun actually - when you’re dragging those words out like someone extracting a guinea worm (don’t google if you’re squeamish).

It is also sadly true that while non-writing time is enriching to your writing, time spent putting words on the page is still the essential thing. Procrastination is extremely easy and tempting, but (sorry) is only sometimes necessary thinking time. Sometimes it’s just procrastination and you do need to buckle down and get the job done.

I think one facet of building a sustainable writing practice is the learning of your own needs. You learn to recognise the days when you need to set yourself a goal, put the pomodoro timer on, glue your bum to your chair and threaten yourself with No More Chocolate unless you hit your target. You even learn the most effective ways of kicking yourself up the arse, by coming to recognise the different reasons for hitting the creative wall. Getting yourself through the 30k wall requires a different approach to dragging yourself to the end of a book that’s due with your editor yesterday. Facing the scary Edit Letter is a different kind of hurdle to writing a synopsis, although just as tempting to hide from.

Giving yourself the structure, stern talking to, or bribery to achieve whatever you need to achieve is an essential skill and it’s not one someone else can do for you. Much as it’s helpful to wail at writer friends about needing a kick, the actual kicking still comes down to you. Developing these tricks and processes though will stand you in good stead for this whole publishing thing - it will make hitting deadlines a little smoother, and the ‘creative blocks’ shorter-lived.

HOWEVER, the other side of this coin is that it is equally important to learn to recognise the times when you need to step away. Being exhausted, overwhelmed, burned out, bored or frustrated with your writing doesn’t mean you suddenly hate the entire craft or are failing at some esoteric Artistry, just like it’s equally ridiculous to think that you can only create if you are suffering. Pfft to all of that.

There are times when the absolute best thing you can do, both for your writing and for yourself, is leave it alone for a while. If that means asking for an extension or shelving a project or just switching briefly to a fun side project, then that’s okay. Your reasons for needing this break can be many and varied, from your health, your other work or your family’s needs, to an issue with this book that needs some headspace to resolve. It could be that you’ve had a recent battering from a barrage of rejections or bad reviews or the like, and your confidence is too shaky to carry you to the page. That’s okay. I mean, it’s not, rejection sucks and we hates it. But it’s also part of the process so we need habits for dealing with it when it happens. It could also be good things taking you away from writing - having a fantastic debut author events season is a wonderful thing, but all those events, the travel, the peopling, the exposure - they’re exhausting and they don’t leave much time, let alone creative energy, for writing.

So yes, porqué no los dos. Sometimes we need to respect the art, and give ourselves the space to approach it rested, enriched and enthused because that way lies the greatest potential for deepening our craft and our stories. Sometimes though we need to respect the job, and just Get Shit Done, because that’s the only way we’ll maintain a long term career.

I think it comes down to this:

What matters isn’t the words you write today, but the ability to still be writing in 5 years or 10, or 20. So what will it take to make that happen?

If it’s getting this damn book delivered come hell or high water, then stock up on chocolate and deliver the damn book, Nancy.

If it’s reminding yourself there’s a world out there, if it’s breathing, sleeping, rediscovering new ways of seeing, then close your laptop and find the joy. Or at least the quality naps.

Wishing you all the chocolate, naps and beauty you need to create your stories.

---

Next time … oh man who knows? I’m clearly too chaotic for this ‘next time’ nonsense. I really really want to write about certain reshuffling things that are afoot because once again it involves one of the many things which remain largely untalked about in publishing but that many, many authors go through at some point in their career. Perhaps when things have settled a little!