Interludes – Starving Artists

Yesterday, I did not write a single word.  Saturday is one of my two days off and I normally use it as a day to catch up on everything.  Project writing, Monday’s post, podcast writing, letters to various Agents, etc.  It, much like Tuesday, is a source of unfettered work time.  It is a chance to do authoring the way authoring needs to be done in order to be successful.

And yet, I did no such thing yesterday.  It wasn’t an accident either: I made the decision deliberately.  I made the decision armed with the knowledge that I’m under a pretty major deadline, and that this week I missed several blog posts trying to meet that deadline.  I hit bottom and decided to keep on digging.

It was the best thing I could’ve done for myself as both an author and a human being.

It was wonderful because I live in a constant state of perpetual warfare against the romanticized idea of the ‘starving artist’.  It is a belief held by those who do not know what it is struggle from day to day or a thought which consumes those who consume art without any knowledge of what the act of creation entails.  They believe that when an artist is pushed to the brink of their mental fortitude, or past it, onto the threshold where sanity and insanity meet that their best works are found.  They believe that art is a form of suffering, that only when an artist coats themselves in the worst that life has to offer can they produce meaningful work.  They cannot make a masterpiece if they do not use torturous paints to do it.

I could literally spend the next sixty thousand words tearing that argument apart at the seams, but that’s not important.  Let’s just be extremely generous and say that the whole idea is a steaming pile of cow dung.

Do you know when I do my best, most outstanding work?  When I think of the most amazing worlds, the best characters, and pen the most advanced writing of my career to date?

After I’ve had a long nights sleep, gotten up and had a good breakfast, and have a chance to work out.

Do you know when I do my absolute worst writing?  The kind of work that I don’t even bother counting as writing, and simply delete without showing it to anyone or claiming that I even wrote it at all despite the fact I may have spent hours on it?!!? 

You guessed it: When I’m tired or extremely stressed out over the harsh realities of living at the bottom where every single problem inflates to emergency size with alarming rapidity.

Yesterday I didn’t write, because my wonderful, sweet child decided that the rock he was holding at daycare was the same size as his ear.  Wouldn’t it be clever if he put the rock in his ear, then showed Daddy and Mommy that his ear was the same size as the rock?  Love me Mommy and Daddy, for I am both clever and funny!

And he’s right, oh my goodness is that funny.  Right up until my wife wasn’t able to get the rock out.  It’s wedged in there, tightly.  And it’s hurting now, having been there for most of a day.  So when she tried to remove he, he’s squirming and crying because it hurts and it’s not funny anymore and he just wants it out and why can’t Mommy just make it go away already?

So he had to go to the emergency room, because I’m not letting a rock wedged in his ear permanently damage his hearing.  That doesn’t sound so bad right?  Just a simple trip, a few minutes under the stethoscope, and then off we ride into the sunset.  Pump the brakes though, because this is about to go sideways.

You see, I started a new job a few months ago.  Three months ago this August, to be exact.  Know how I know that?  Because my health insurance (and by extension my sons) kicks on once August 1st rolls around.

… In two weeks…

See my dilemma?  See what it means when you struggle, when things are paycheck to paycheck, and you’re so broke that you wear shoes with holes in them and your health insurance package is “Well, hope nothing bad happens cause if it does I’m screwed!”

My toddler sticks a rock in his ear in a fit of feeling clever, and suddenly my wife and I are out upwards of two grand.  The rock is still in there as I write this.  They couldn’t get it out because it was larger than we had thought and it really, really hurts now so Ryan is fighting and crying whenever they try to extract it.  He’s going to have to be sedated, and the resident isn’t doing that.  Not by a mile.  So we have to wait until Monday to get a Doctor in the ER who is a specialist in Child Anesthesia.  You don’t screw around when it comes to sedation, because done incorrectly it can kill a child with alarming ease.  It will cost more, but I would gladly burn every possession I owned if that’s what it took to keep Ryan warm.  If you become attached to a child, you’ll understand that mentality.  He is here solely at my whim, and despite everything that I do, he loves me completely and trusts me implicitly.  Death terrifies me, and I’d die for him without thinking about it.

None of this changed my deadline, which was still Saturday.  The voice talent that I am working with (who I will not name until the ink is dry upon our contract and we have the first Podcast in the bank) has been pretty upset with me over how long this process has taken.  They are extremely busy, and I am not the only one vying for their time.  So when stuff like this happens, my only recourse was to be honest with them.  I could try to rush out a finish to the story I’ve been working on for close to a month, or I could explain what happened and ask for another week.  Thankfully, they are familiar with my progeny and his propensity to do foolishly intelligent things, so there was an extra week to be found.

Do you see what I mean?  My son sticking some random bit of our planet in his ear became an emergency that will cost us at least twice the price of releasing my novella would’ve and very nearly destroyed my chances with the voice talent I’ve been bargaining with for almost a month.  Having a deadline digging into back of my head, ready to go off at any moment is not the appropriate temperament for writing!

So yeah, yesterday I didn’t write.  I didn’t plan.  I didn’t do anything that wasn’t take care of a bunch of goats and chickens and barn dogs and bunny rabbits.  I watched Thor: Ragnarok with a bunch of friends.  I watched some stand-up comedy.  I talked about a bunch of things that had nothing to do with writing.

I healed.  And now that I’ve had some sleep, gotten some peace, and have a chance to catch my breath mentally, I’m able to write again.

So the next time you hear someone say “I prefer the work of starving artists” or something along those lines, please do me a huge favor and blow an enormous raspberry over whatever else they are trying to say.

Worry and anxiety is the mortal enemy of productive arting, and I sincerely hope the “starving artist” line of thought will be swept into the dustbin of history.  That’s the only place it belongs.

Recuperatively,

Justin