Sunday, July 5, 2015

Writing, advantages, and the myth of Athena

Rather than being born and growing, the goddess Athena was said to have emerged out of Zeus' forehead, fully grown and fully clothed, too. Writers have been trying to recreate Zeus' workflow ever since.

Or, at least, writers have a frustrating habit of doing actual work and then lying about it. (c.f. Coleridge and the poem "Kubla Khan," supposedly conceived full-formed in a dream). This is part of what got us creatives into the mess I was complaining about last month, where the general public is loath to pay for art that they think came about effortlessly.

It's not just economics that makes it a good idea to acknowledge the realities of writing--that is, it's not just audiences who need to be set straight. People who want to create suffer from the popular image of art as something that just sort of happens to creative people. (There's similar harm done by the idea that to be an artist it's necessary to be crazy or dysfunctional.) What work, exactly, I am trying to do and how, exactly, to do it, is something I'm still getting a handle on, myself.

What brought me back to the topic is a pair of articles I stumbled on today. One is a book excerpt by Matthew Weiner, the major creative force behind the recently ended series Mad Men. I'll just quote what he says on the matter right here:
Artists frequently hide the steps that lead to their masterpieces. They want their work and their career to be shrouded in the mystery that it all came out at once. It’s called hiding the brushstrokes, and those who do it are doing a disservice to people who admire their work and seek to emulate them. If you don’t get to see the notes, the rewrites, and the steps, it’s easy to look at a finished product and be under the illusion that it just came pouring out of someone’s head like that. People who are young, or still struggling, can get easily discouraged, because they can’t do it like they thought it was done. An artwork is a finished product, and it should be, but I always swore to myself that I would not hide my brushstrokes.
Much of his story of the path to success is the usual one about persisting in the face of discouragement and rejection, but he also mentions being married to an architect who was willing to support him during his years of frustration. I think more people who extol the virtue of persistence should be up-front about how they ate while they were persisting. Which brings me to the second article I stumbled on (with the help of my wife--just one of many things she helps me with is stumbling on interesting writing) by author Ann Bauer, saying authors should be less coy about where their money comes from (at least, as is often the case, when it comes from family or spouses). Even Virginia Woolf said that if you're going to write fiction, you need some money (and a room of your own) first.

It's disheartening to imagine that people who succeed do so because of money or connections, but then that's not the entire truth, either. I suspect that the real secret to success (and a secret because, unlike, say, luck or hard work, we rarely discuss it) is to figure out what advantages you have and make the most of them. The right combination probably isn't the same for everyone. But aspirants should stop feeling like failures for relying on their support networks just because their heroes forgot to mention the time they spent doing the same.