Mortgage vs art

[Anna Bowles]

Posted across from http://chocolatekeyboard.blogspot.com

**

Another week, another literary sequel. This time to Hitch-Hiker’s Guide, causing my earnest techie boyfriend to fulminate about ‘blasphemy’ in an endearing fashion. But I intend to read it!

It is also another week of spending all but one day at my desk writing. The schedule for the current commissioned work has hit a snafu (as, lord knows, is the way of 99% of publishing schedules), so here I am, excavating immortal art from the depths of my soul unhindered by anything much except the need to occasionally take breaks to read a book or blog.

If you are, like me, a stunningly versatile freelancer with a glowing CV and a brilliant future (or a repeat galloper into dead ends, delete as applicable), the kinds of work you do divide interestingly as follows:

a) non-publishing editorial work: score 4/10 for self-esteem, 9/10 for earning value
b) publishing editorial work (on more or less glamorous projects): 4 to 7/10 for self-esteem depending on said glamour level, 6/10 for earning value
c) commissioned writing work: 8/10 for self-esteem, 3/10 for earning value
d) rustling up more of the above no score out of 10, but keeps the whole process functioning
e) writing work for which you are not currently being paid and which may well be wanted by nobody, ever: N/10 for self-esteem, N/10 for earning value.

It’s the values of ‘N’ that cause the trouble. I might not know for years what the values of N are, and they have a high chance of ending up nil. That means that, because I am not indifferent to my mortgage, my categories of work tend to get prioritised in alphabetical order.

I’m betting almost every writer outside the hallowed and miniscule band of big earners has a version of the same dilemma, and your personal feeling about the importance of self-esteem vs the importance of mortgage payments is bound to have a big effect on how you use your time (even before we take into account the value of ‘N’). If/when you start having a public profile as a writer but still need other sources of income, the question of time-consuming self-promotion activities comes into it too. I for one almost always err on the side of the mortgage, causing myself to worry about my Commitment to Art. Art presumably being some kind of ethereal fairy that lives on rejection letters.

Perhaps the only solution is to earn so much money from original fiction that the need for income-generating activities ‘a’ through ‘d’ goes away.

And what then? Surely the luxury of worrying about being out of touch.