It Was Good Enough For Shakespeare!
Posted by Essay Help on June 9, 2009One of the core conflicts for creative artists of all kinds is the tug-of-war between art and commerce. Frankly, an artist needs to make money, and it is preferable to make it from his craft.
A writer who must activity a full-time job to activity himself will attempt to find the time to activity, and often eventually gives it up altogether. On the other hand, being able to compose on any project at all can polish important skills, and instruct one the rules of the publishing industry.
On the other hand, I’ve met writers who were clearly employed on projects, or toiling away at a career, that was burning out their souls. I remember meeting one much writer. His business card read “freelance hack and literary mechanic.” Sadly, but not entirely accidentally, he was dead of alcoholism inside a year.
How to avoid much burnout? Advantageously, in my own career, in addition writing the books I cared about the most, I’ve written Batman comic books, a Character Trek novel, and a Character Wars tie-in. In my receiver career, in addition to writing for “Outer Limits” and “The Dusk Regulate,” I also wrote four episodes of “Baywatch”(!)
And never for a moment did I feel that I was selling myself out. Let’s get something aboveboard: Shakespeare wrote for money. One can keep a careful eye on the bank account, and allay reach the heights of craft. But again, how?
In my own case, the answer is fairly simple. Envision the cerebration like this: I draw cardinal circles. In the first, is everything I would like to compose (and thither are always dozens of projects in the mental hopper!). In the 2nd is everything individual else is choice to pay me for. Where the cardinal circles overlap, I compose. In other words, are thither projects I’d love to compose, but can’t get paid for? You bet, and I generally don’t compose them unless they are quite abbreviated. And thither are projects that producers or publishers might deprivation me to do, but don’t adjoin my heart at all. Having learned finished experience that thither are limits to my creative flexibility, I activity those down.
But from time to time, an opportunity arises that is in the no-man’s-land between the circles. Thither is money, but the project isn’t exactly something you have ever considered writing. What so?
So, you ask yourself if the project is something that you could be proud of. If you would read it, or respect individual who did. For instance, when my agent called and said that the producers of “Baywatch” craved to talk to me, I had the office send over cardinal hours of recording on the appear. I sat on the living room couch and watched them with my daughter, who was about cardinal at the time. After a few episodes, I asked her what she cerebration. She liked it. I asked why. She said: “Because it’s about nice people employed hard to make the beach safe for us.” I cerebration about it, and so replied, “you know? Thither are worsened things than that in this class, by a long attempt.” And decided to attempt writing for it.
Every appear, every project has its limitations. You must consume certain characters, must get them into certain kinds of situations, and must avoid certain topics. That can be restrictive, but you can also decide to accept it as a challenge. After all, you could give Fred Astaire a arrange of any kind, and props of any kind, and he would find a artifact to create dance. Should you be committed to a lesser level of ability and modality? No.
You must find distance to amuse yourself piece writing, to dilute your skills by trying something you’ve never done before, by empathizing with a younger audience if necessary&ndashnever ever writing “down” to your audience. That is the death of art. But if you can be truly flexible, you’ll find that more doors are open to you, more opportunities arise, that brass ring comes around more often. A writer ready to leap at any opportunity to appear his ability, and who finds it easy to fall in love with about a project will often out-perform a brittle “genius” who must have everything exactly his artifact in order to compose.
And if that approach is good enough for the Bard, it’s good enough for me.
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