Quote:
Originally Posted by Julie Steiner
But if money IS an important measure of artistic success to you—and it certainly sounds like it is, because you keep mentioning sales—you will need to spend far more time promoting your work than you do creating it. Or, if you can't stand the heat of the marketplace's supply and demand dynamics, I would advise you to get out of the economic kitchen.
It sounds like you are opting for the latter in practice, but are still theorizing about artistic success in monetary terms. I don't think trying to have it both ways is going to be a recipe for happiness.
I hope these thoughts are helpful.
|
I believe you might have misinterpreted my posts, but I do appreciate the comments.
I've never been interested in monetary success vis-a-vis my writing, and I figured if I ever was I would have to put the effort in, in the exact way you mention. However, because poetry is particularly unpopular I've never seriously entertained the idea. I write for myself, my family, and my friends, and that's about it. Any selling or promotion I have done was more akin to a social experiment than related to finance.
I make a comfortable salary, and a layoff without being able to find work would be disastrous. So I'm pretty much forced to keep my skills up to date, year after year (no real time to write / promote).
When I mentioned ..
people don't have the ability to appreciate poetry .. that's not said with any amount of angst. But rather I'm trying to turn the popular notion of poetry being underappreciated on it's head.
I've seen poets who got down on themselves because of the fact, but I don't think poetry is particularly disrespected by any means. But rather, it's just a niche genre, that the overwhelming amount of people out there don't understand.