I don’t remember where it happened, exactly. It was years ago, but it chased me for too, too long.
Someone, somewhere, told me that to be an artist, to chase the writing dream that flapped in my heart, I would end up poor and penniless.
It’s not unusual to meet the ones who believe it to be true. They say it in subtle ways, asking what we “do,” and when we answer, “I’m a writer” or “I’m a painter” or “I’m a musician,” they stare blankly and maybe shake their heads and then ask their follow-up.
“Yes, but what do you do for money?”
Because being an artist, chasing a dream, couldn’t possibly support a family of eight.
When I was just a girl, all I wanted to do in the world was write and read other people’s writing in the margins, and there was a summer that came when someone in my family called me lazy for the way I would sit and scrawl in a notebook or lie in a hammock and read.
Writing, you see, was not really a career pursuit. I was not practicing for my profession, in their eyes. I was enjoying a hobby for hours, and that made me lazy.
Except when I wasn’t doing the work of writing or reading, I felt like half a person, like I existed but didn’t really. I satisfied my urge by signing up for all the extracurricular writing I could do in junior high and high school, because writing and reading for school-related competitions gave me the reason I needed to do what I loved.
But writing down the novels that took shape within me even then? It would be a long time before I did that, because “they” told me it was silly and irresponsible.
In college, I started out as a creative writing major and a music minor, until a well-meaning advisor said I might want to choose a major that was “more practical in this economy” and just minor in music and creative writing. A “more practical” major like journalism or teaching, something that would make money.
I chose journalism, because at least I could work for a newspaper and do some of what I loved.
I don’t regret this, or course I don’t, because I learned to be a student of human nature during my newspaper years, and I learned to write concisely and quickly, and I learned how to take a story no one else thought was worth telling and make it something people would want to read.
But I do wish that I hadn’t spent so many years with fiction stories trapped inside me because I believed they were not worth pursuit and ended only in poor.
I spent too many years not writing what I wanted, not embracing my art, and then that urge just burned too wild within me, so I had to do it or explode.
I had to chase. I had to dream. I had to write, and who cares what “they” all said?
If we love our art, we must pursue it or we’ll never be whole.
Maybe those people who don’t believe that pursuing art is a worthwhile profession will always be around. Maybe they will always (intentionally or unintentionally) make us feel wrong for our “frivolous” pursuit. Maybe we will not ever be able to make them understand what makes it so impossible to do anything but what we have been made to do.
Write. Sing. Paint. Draw. Dance. Play.
They are not hobbies. They are life.
I hope we will be true to ourselves. I hope we will know the beauty our art brings to the world and how necessary that beauty is. I hope we will create no matter what “they” say.
Because we will find, once there, once enmeshed in the creative career, that the only starving artist is the one who never pursues his art.
What story do you carry about someone discouraging you from pursuing your art? How did it make you feel? How did you overcome?
Welcome to The Ink Well Creative Community.
The Ink Well Community is evolving. While this used to be a place where I posted a prompt for writers to share their creative works, I have been receiving several inquiries about my process, how I create and read and manage a household with half a dozen little ones. So I thought we could turn this into a community of people who share about the creative process in all its many facets, from where we find our inspiration to when we find time to create (especially if we work other jobs). I’ll be sharing struggles about my creative life and logistical information about my particular creative process and what I’m learning about creativity, among many other things. I hope you’ll weigh in with your own struggles and observations and lessons. Let’s start a conversation. Let’s encourage one another. Let’s live the creative life together.
And if you have your own questions about creativity or process or inspiration, feel free to visit my contact page and send me a note.
