Didn't we once have a conversation in the music thread about rock musicians with (unexpected) PhDs? The guy I know personally was a pretty successful rock musician and frankly the music was his plan B - he wrote his dissertation in Roman History at Harvard while touring Europe with a rock band, but left the music world in favor of a tenure-track academic job. Does his success in (and preference for) a "straight" job negate his success as a rocker? (It could also be argued that in the modern employment environment, getting a PhD in the humanities is riskier than becoming a rock musician...)

Bullshit. If I could get Chatty to register here, I would. Then he could tell you about his Plan B and yet he's still achieved his dream of inking for Marvel.

Different things work for different people, but I think the principle holds. I'm sure it took him longer to achieve his goal, and I think generally the longer it takes and the older you get, the harder it is to achieve that goal.

So what happens if the wife also wants to be a writer? Who makes the hard choice about supporting the art of the other person?

That's between the people in the marriage. There are many instances of husbands supporting their wives writing careers, that was case was notable for the gender swap. Joyce Carol Oates' husband paid the bills for a long time.

Didn't we once have a conversation in the music thread about rock musicians with (unexpected) PhDs?

That is notable chiefly for its novelty. Though 3/4s of Queen had advanced science degrees, and the lead singer of The Blasters got a mathematics degree those are extremely rare exceptions.

I'm not saying you can't work full time and have a creative career. You can. But it's enough of an obstacle that it's going to less often lead to success.

Risk taking when you're young, when you're unburdened with other responsibilities, when you're willing live with insecurity - that is by far the most common way people build creative carers.

the most common way people build creative carers.

I'm assuming that creative careers don't include all creative people, just the crazy fame junkie ideal. Because there are people who write songs/movies/books as their primary job, and who went to school for all that, and got a nine to five. All songs aren't scribbled on a coked up supermodel's panties between acid trips.

There's an elevation of one tiny slice of "creative" here that's got some creaky values. The creative career I'd have wanted? You can tell I didn't got to school for it and then get day jobs doing it, because those people are so much better than me. If I'd decided to draw or die, they'd still be better than me. And they're not in some epic dramatic edgy lifestyle, just a nine to five they worked their way up the same way I worked my way up mine.

I'm assuming you don't mean creative like that, right? You mean the cool kind of creative.

You mean the cool kind of creative.

Damn if I'm not going to emoticon.

:D

You mean the cool kind of creative.

Well, I mostly know the memoirs and bios of rock musicians and writers. If you've read any writers' correspondence you'll see about 50% of it is begging for money from their friends and family. But I'm pretty intimate with the career paths of hundreds of musicians and bands, and the patterns are fairly consistent (depending on time, place, era and opportunity).

British bands of the sixties had a defacto patronage system called Art School, where they could be supported while they met interesting teachers with wild ideas and still have plenty of time to rehearse. That's one of the main reasons why so many bands came out of Britain it the sixties.

Matthew Weiner is cool, right? His wife supported him for years while he tried to get Mad Men sold.

Risk taking when you're young, when you're unburdened with other responsibilities, when you're willing live with insecurity - that is by far the most common way people build creative carers.

Need more math for that. And not fuzzy Gladwell pseudomath. Anecdotes not being data, and all.

Map it to starting socioeconomic class, gender, race, etc. Show me the money, as that horrible movie says.

Heh, Plei made me think of the common hip-hop trope of Plan B being drug-dealing. Not all musicians went to art school.

Anecdotes not being data, and all.

All I'm hearing are anecdotes about people who worked and wrote a book.

Map it to starting socioeconomic class, gender, race, etc. Show me the money, as that horrible movie says.

I haven't quantified it but I'm reasonably sure that I'm well versed in artist bios, as I've read literally hundreds of them.

I could break down the broader issues of class, gender, race etc, and they all affect success and opportunity. However, the vast majority of artistic endeavors are not supported within the economy so artists find strategies to work in the margins of the culture. Excepting artists who have the means to not work (and they are the exception as you get deeper into the 20th century and 21st), this is consistent and the strategies are similar.

You mean the cool kind of creative.

Heh.

I will say that reading this and contemplating my writing while doing tech support is a bit of a bummer.