It's certainly More Dramatic, but there's no way you can tell Brian it would be better if he wasn't a psychologist too, since you never asked him if he's happy with his voiceover work. Did you ask Dave, who only does voice work if he is happier, richer, having better sex than Brian? Doing better voices?

I can't possibly shout the word ARBITRARY loudly enough for this. You like it better, Hec, and I guess you're a failure for not managing it, but you judge you, and you don't have any idea what Brian or Dave want out of their creative pursuit.

You're not even supporting a Better, IMO right now.

1. Making a living creating the work you want to do is better than:

2. Making a living doing work you dislike;

3. ..or Doing the work you like but not being able to support yourself.

But you know there's a fourth option, right? Which is making a living doing work you like that does not happen to be art. Plenty of people enjoy both doing their art and also doing other fulfilling or interesting work.

Advocating a strategy is not an indictment of you if you take a different path.

Sure, but explicitly saying one path is better than another is coming perilously close to that indictment.

But it doesn't make you a better artist, or a better person.

I don't know why anybody's talking about being a better person.

It's not an ethos. It's not a judgement. It's a WAY to create an artistic career. One way. I happen to think it is a perfectly valid way - that is, privileging risk over security.

If you choose another way that doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make a successful artist a better person.

I just think you are more likely to succeed in an artistic career if you don't privilege security.

What do I mean by succeed? The ability to do your chosen work on your terms. You only have to be financially successful enough to do your work and juggle whatever else you have in your life.

Which is making a living doing work you like that does not happen to be art.

Of course - but we're talking about the particular problems of being an artist in a culture and economy that doesn't value the pursuit of art enough to support the artists.

That is a radical interpretation of the text.

Perhaps you should re-examine exactly how successfully your text is reflecting the message you actually want to convey, because it's coming off as a judgmental and dismissive sermon to the bourgeois to me. Given that (1) I went into a career in the Arts with no Plan B, and (2) have been moderately successful at doing so (at least according to my own standards), I should be an easy target. Yet you're not winning me over.

we're talking about the particular problems of being an artist in a culture and economy that doesn't value the pursuit of art enough to support the artists.

OK, so you're specifically talking about the life and choices of someone who wants to do art, and is not interested in doing something other than art. I get that, and I do think that a successful, full-time artistic career -- making enough money from your art to live on -- quite often requires the kind of risk-taking and focus that we were talking about earlier.

But the point that other people are making is that there are numerous other ways for someone who loves their art to lead a happy life that includes, but may not depend on, artistic pursuits. Those paths can be fulfilling and meaningful, both artistically and personally, and it would not be wrong to *also* call them successful.

Plan B is the second plan for a reason - because it is less desirable.

Or maybe you take a job that you thought would be Plan B but actually turns out to be really interesting, and ten years go by, and you find that you've gotten really drawn into this whole other world that you really enjoy. I'd argue that's not really Plan B anymore. And while you can say that you might have been even happier or more successful sticking with your comic-drawing or your oboe-playing, that's going to be a pretty hard argument to support.

But you do not get to impose your art-over-everything values on the rest of us.

The only thing I was talking about was the best way to become a full time artist.

My entire stance is based on the presumption that IF you want to be a full time artist THEN you'd be better off living with risk.

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.

IF you want to become a fulltime artist THEN it is Better to make a living at it.

See, it's not a radical stance or nor an indictment of anybody who prefers (for whatever reason) to do their art part-time.

My question is this: if you want to be a creative artist of some kind, and you want to get paid for it, does that mean you can't want anything else?

Because if you have children, or even a dog, living on the edge to throw yourself into your work full-time may help you be more successful at the work, but it's not going to feed your kids or get your dog to the vet. And as important as writing is to me, being a mom and having a relationship with my husband is equally important.

So are a lot of things that help me write better, like reading other books and taking classes or going to readings, even having a laptop and a stable internet connection. All of those things cost money.

Also, if I may parse this:

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.

It is very clear that I am referring to Consuela's "a paying career."

There is nothing in anything I wrote saying that it made you a better person or even a better artist.

My question is this: if you want to be a creative artist of some kind, and you want to get paid for it, does that mean you can't want anything else?

I don't think it is an either/or question. I think you have to balance those other things against your artistic career. Because the more responsibilities you take on, the less time you have for your work.

I think craving security is inimical to creating, but it's not antithetical. The more you value security the less freedom you have to create. Because security is an investment of energy and time.

As I noted (even before Jilli's comment to the same effect) some people work better from a stable place. So the balance point is different for different people. But I think that security always costs something on the artistic side.