I have to say, I have never heard a single thing about Amanda Palmer that would lead me to seek out her music.

And you're ignoring the "I really like being a psychologist and doing voice work for animation and computer games" people who have it going on both cylinders, and like their lives to boot.

Yes, this. Everything ita ! just said.

Let's not forget that success is defined in many different ways. And someone who sacrificed everything to become a professional writer in their youth maybe got a career out of it (if they were lucky), but perhaps the novel they would have written in their 50s after thirty years working and raising a family might have been more meaningful.

I think it's a mistake to privilege a paying career as an artist/creative person as Better. The result isn't necessarily better art, and it may not even be a better life for the artist.

I think it's a mistake to privilege a paying career as an artist/creative person as Better. The result isn't necessarily better art, and it may not even be a better life for the artist.

That's a really good point.

I think it's a mistake to privilege a paying career as an artist/creative person as Better.

Yeah, I have no problem privileging that as Better.

Yeah, I have no problem privileging that as Better.

I've noticed.

I've noticed.

So? It's a not unreasonable stance.

I do believe it is Better to be a full time voiceover artist because you're going to get the most interesting work, and get paid more for it and have to do less of the work that you don't find interesting.

That's better in every way. Plan B is the second plan for a reason - because it is less desirable.

To follow-up: a paying career as an artist is what you want, great. But it doesn't make you a better person, except inasmuch as you're personally happier (I assume).

You don't get the moral high ground for being a professional artist. And you don't get to lord it over those of us who squeeze in our creativity in the corners of our lives, sketching during teleconferences and scribbling outlines on the bus home.

Yeah, I have no problem privileging that as Better.

Better, how? And you know that's a direct slap in Jilli's face, right? And Amy? (And other Buffistas I'm forgetting in my ire, sorry, folks!) I mean Fuck Chatty Co-Worker and his Plan B. You don't know him, and he's my one big piece of anecdata. You don't have to care that you're shitting all over his work with your glib statement. (Seriously. You don't know him; you don't have to be nice about his selling out to make sure his family has health insurance.)

But you ARE shitting all over the talent and hard work of Jilli and Amy, because they are not Better.

Well done.

Here's the thing: I don't want to be a professional novelist. It's solo, grinding, stressful work, with a lot of attention paid to the business end of things. (And for the majority of writers, it doesn't even pay that well!) I like the thought that I can write in my off-hours and still pay my bills and do interesting work (! yes, interesting and sometimes creative work that is not writing fiction) for my full-time job.

I reject your priorities, David.

If being a full-time artist is important to you, that's great, go to it. But you do not get to impose your art-over-everything values on the rest of us. Because, as Steph says above, claiming living as a professional artist is better in some sort of absolute way is denigrating the majority of the world who don't have the time/opportunity/desire to do that.