Josh Lacey, CWIG Committee member
Most writers know this quote from Samuel Johnson, although none of us can be sure if he meant the words sincerely or ironically. His biographer Boswell certainly didn’t agree with the sentiment, following the quotation with a refinement of his own:
“Numerous instances to refute this will occur to all who are versed in the history of literature.”
Perhaps Boswell was a little stung by his friend’s words, because his own books were written for love, not money. They weren’t commercially successful, and Boswell had a day job as a lawyer.
I’m sure that the conflict between art and commerce affects every member of CWIG. We are all creative people, aiming to express ourselves and pursue our own artistic goals. At the same time, we are working in a highly competitive market, where publishers are nervous of new ideas; celebrities and brands dominate the shelves; and AI appears to be poised to take away everyone’s livelihoods. How can we, as creative people, resolve this conflict between self-expression and commerce? Should we refuse to be blockheads and work only for money? Or should we ignore Johnson’s words and concentrate on our art without consideration for the commerciality of our ideas?
I asked a few other children’s writers and illustrators how they felt about this conflict, and how they deal with it in their own lives. One thing was immediately apparent: they all recognised what I was asking about. Things haven’t got any better since 1777, when Boswell wrote his diary entry about blockheads.
“Freelancing has shifted considerably,” Ian Billings told me. “Work is harder than ever to come by, and I should know, I’ve been freelancing for over twenty years. Now is the worst time ever.”
In this tricky landscape for freelancers, how can writers and illustrators earn a living while creating their own work and pursuing their own creative projects? How do you pursue your own vision – which is original, unusual, and, more than anything, distinctively your own – while also fulfilling the demands of the marketplace? How do you nurture and protect your own creativity while selling your work?
One path (you could call it the Boswell route) is dividing your working life, apportioning some of your time and energy to creative work while earning money in a different and possibly entirely unrelated way. On this subject, Chris Bradford recommended a book by an American writer, Ronda Ormont: Career Solutions for Creative People: How to Balance Artistic Goals with Career Security.
In her book, Ormont makes a simple point: if you’re a creative person, you will be liberated by creating a balance between your creative work and the work that puts food on the table and pays the rent. If you can separate these two parts of your life, you won’t feel such a pressure to earn money from your creative work, and you’ll soon discover that you actually enjoy it more. And if you’re a creative person who is trapped in an uncreative job, you’ll feel equally liberated by downsizing or going part-time, and devoting some portion of your working week to your own creativity.
Joanna Nadin echoed this view, saying that “my years as a full time novelist, even though I was earning enough, were the unhappiest as I worried endlessly and had to say yes to everything.” Having experimented with different ways of balancing creativity and commerce, she prefers to find a separate space for her creative work, and “to have a day job that takes pressure off the writing to pay bills.”
Lydia Monks, a full-time illustrator, can see the advantages of dividing your more commercial work, however creative, and your personal projects: “For example, Emily Gravett and her beautiful pottery.” (If you haven’t seen Emily Gravett’s pottery, have a look at her Instagram account.)
However, Lydia admits that she herself finds it very difficult to achieve this enviable balance between creativity and commerce. “I just don’t have enough hours in the day. Illustrating books is time consuming. I have a list of personal projects that I’d love to do, but until I win the lottery, those might not ever see the light of day.”
Gita Ralleigh works as a creative writing teacher, a children’s author, and a poet, and she says, “I see my poetry almost as a pure outlet for creative expression as there is very little money involved.” When she’s working on her children’s books, she takes a more collaborative approach, relying on her agent’s expertise to hone an idea. “If she thinks it’s worth pursuing, I trust in her publishing knowledge and commercial acumen and push on.”
Abie Longstaff describes a similar balance between initial creative inspiration and a more commercial outlook: “While I’m playing with ideas and writing drafts, I just write what I like (or what I liked when I was 9 years old). But at later stages I do have to consider the market more. I need to understand where my book fits and who it’s for, in terms of genre or age group. I know that when I show something to an agent or an editor they will ask themselves ‘what’s the hook?’ and there IS an aspect of this that is helpful, so I try to view it positively. It forces me to drill down into what my story is really about and what its focus should be.’
I admire these optimistic answers, although my own feelings are more ambivalent. On the one hand, I feel that the marketplace has to be accepted for what it is. It’s bigger than any of us, and much more powerful. Recently I read an interview with Tony Gilroy (not a writer of children’s books, as far as I know, but the screenwriter of Michael Clayton and Andor). Talking about the movie business and how he has managed to keep working for so many years, he was clear that: “one of the major, most important things carved in stone that I know: it does no good to complain about the weather, man. You got to go out, you got to see what’s there.”
In other words: you need to accept that you are living in a particular time, when producers, publishers, and audiences want particular things, and there is no point feeling upset or angry about that. You have to work within certain boundaries and constraints, and do your job. Stay creative; make your work; but don’t complain about the environment, because it’s where you have chosen to be.
At the same time, these commercial pressures will try to define and limit our creativity. The best artists have the courage, self-confidence, and bloody-mindedness to fight for the integrity of their work. We have to protect our fragile works of art when we send them into the rapacious marketplace, like little paper boats launched into the Atlantic.
Oh, and I’m definitely a blockhead myself. I’m not being paid for writing this.
