Issue #341: How to Earn Money from Your Writing
Recently I met with Bill Ivey, the former chairman for the National Endowment of the Arts. He told me that we sometimes think the alternative to the Starving Artist is what he calls the Subsidized Artist, but that’s the wrong way to think about it. Art needs money. We can deny it all we want and pretend starving makes for better art, but starving o
... See moreJeff Goins • Real Artists Don't Starve: Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the New Creative Age
But this opens up an important question: certainly important to me, because my ability to feed my family depends upon it. If I turn my art into a gift… how do I live? Of course this is not my unique, personal problem. It’s not even a new problem. It’s the universal problem faced by all artists, throughout history.
theeggandtherock.substack.com • I Wrote a Story for a Friend - By Julian Gough
sari added
Never before has so much culture been available to so many at such little cost.
There’s just one tiny problem.
Where’s the audience? The supply of culture is HUGE and GROWING. But the demand side of the equation is ugly.
In many cases—newspaper subscribers, album purchases, movie tickets sold, etc.—the metrics have been shrinking or even collapsing.
... See moreTed Gioia • The State of the Culture
sari added
Keely Adler added
The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need - the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfilment. Such... See more
Audre Lorde • Audre Lorde reads Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power (FULL Updated)
Jay Matthews added
For the sake of post-nutshell clarity, assertions like literature is inherently more serious than games boil down to two anxieties, one material and one aesthetic:
1) The underfunding of the humanities. As college deans and corporate executives shred venues dedicated to reading, writing, and the instruction of reading and writing, many of literature... See more
1) The underfunding of the humanities. As college deans and corporate executives shred venues dedicated to reading, writing, and the instruction of reading and writing, many of literature... See more
Mason Andrew Hamberlin • Even When You’re Not Playing, You’re Playing: On “Critical Hits” — Cleveland Review of Books
People need to eat and pay the rent. “An amateur is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint,” said artist Ben Shahn. “A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.” Whether an artist makes money off his work or not, money has to come from somewhere, be it a day job, a wealthy spouse, a trust f
... See more