Be a Creative or Be More Practical?
Be a Creative or Be More Practical?
An internal debate on one of life's key dilemmas.
Posted May 25, 2016
Source: Pexels, Public Domain
Perhaps you’ll gain some clarity from this internal debate.
PERSON: In my bones, I’m a creative. I'd love to make my living writing novels, stories, even screenplays.
ALTER EGO: But so would millions of other people. So, supply and demand means most of them starve. Why not write stuff that would get you paid: catalog copy, annual reports, or nonprofit fundraising letters?
PERSON: Business writing is so much less interesting to me than creative writing.
ALTER EGO: You could bring your creativity even to business writing.
PERSON: Not enough. I wish I had started getting serious about fiction writing earlier but it’s not too late. I really should start on my novel, maybe go to one of those writer’s retreats, then join a writer’s group, then get an agent to sell my book to a publisher.
ALTER EGO: As with racehorses, the past is the best predictor of the future. Except for getting your degree, you’ve worked only modestly on all your previous goals, and even when you completed writing something, like those short stories, the only place that would publish one was your alumni magazine that paid you 100 bucks for what must have been 100 hours of work. That’s $1 a hour.
PERSON: A professor told me I had professional potential and so did my writing coach.
ALTER EGO: They have everything to gain by being encouraging you and nothing to lose. If a professor praises you, you’re more likely to give him a good student evaluation. If your writing coach praises you, you’re more likely to keep hiring her. What counts are not the people you pay but the people who’d be paying you, and that’s a publisher. Money talks.
PERSON: I owe it to myself to give my writing a real try before I relegate my essence to hobby status. I’m going to circle a date on my calendar two years from now and if I haven’t finished my novel, gotten an agent, and a publisher, I’ll sell insurance or do some other crap job.
ALTER EGO: You’re forgetting that only one in hundreds of completed novels gets published. And only a tiny fraction of those sell enough to earn even a marginal living. Sure, there’s the media-publicized rare novelist who wrote their first successful novel in their 40s or older but they’re anomalies. Do you want to risk having to continue living with two roommates in a dicey neighborhood with crappy health care and no money to go out with your friends? And after two more years of “pursuing your craft,” you’re going have an even harder time of convincing a straight employer to hire you over someone who isn’t such a dreamer.
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PERSON: Plenty of hiring managers in straight jobs had dreams
of being a creative. The right employer will understand me and maybe
even prefer me over one of those overly constrained business majors.ALTER EGO: Putting that aside, is it fair to keep asking mom and dad to subsidize you for yet two more years so you can pursue your lottery-odds dream? And deep down, I’m not even sure you really want to be a writer. I think you’re using your claim of passionately wanting to be a writer as an excuse to keep from growing up and working like everyone else.
PERSON: There’s some truth to that but I really can’t stand the thought of a 9-5 job for the rest of my life.
ALTER EGO: Alas, welcome to the real world. Now you have something to think about.
PERSON: I think I’ll try the novel for, okay, one year. If it doesn’t work, I’ll look hard to find a writing-centric job that would allow a measure of creativity. And to maximize my chances of that, I’ll look in all sectors: corporate, government, and nonprofit communications.
ALTER EGO: Sounds good, just don’t do like you’ve usually done: talk big but then when the going gets tough, you fold and do nothing.
PERSON: I’ll try.
Marty Nemko’s bio is in Wikipedia. His new book, his 8th, is The Best of Marty Nemko.
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