This post is a slightly belated response to a discussion that originated with Seth Godin (discussed here) and continued with a post and comments on Rachelle Gardner’s blog. The basic idea being debated is whether writers have a right to make a living from their writing. Godin says no.

I would agree that in one sense, no one has the “right” to make a living. We all have to work hard and well at our chosen occupations. But if we do that, I personally contend we should be able to make a living at them.

Michael Hyatt commented on Rachelle’s blog that writing is a commodity, and what the writer gets paid depends on how popular his writing is. Simple market economics.

That makes sense for ordinary nonfiction and maybe for commercial fiction (although even there, I believe the writer deserves a bigger piece of the publishing pie, but that’s another post). But I would like to propose the radical idea that real literary art, like every other kind of art, is in a category all its own.

You don’t hear so much about “art” in the writing circles I travel in. You hear an awful lot about “craft,” and people go on and on about how good writing doesn’t take talent, it just takes practice and persistence and following some basic rules. That may be true for writing that stops at the level of craft; I don’t believe it is true for writing that ascends to the status of art. (Yet another post.)

The thing about art—the thing that makes it so difficult to fit into all these convenient formulas about the market economy—is that its ultimate value, its contribution to the sum of beauty and goodness in the world, is not proportional to the number of people who appreciate it within the artist’s lifetime. It may even be inversely proportional, although there are notable exceptions (such as Dickens, who was wildly popular in his lifetime).

The world has always had a hard time dealing with this reality. The problem of the starving artist is so old as to be a cliché. Various models have been tried throughout history—the gentleman artist, private patronage, government patronage, entrepreneurship, and the most prevalent contemporary model, agency (where an outside person or company takes responsibility for propagating the art and pays the artist a percentage).

Each of these models has its drawbacks, but they all (except the gentleman artist, who is probably gone for good) share one big, glaring flaw: Whoever pays the artist ultimately wants to control his output.

Whether it’s the Austrian emperor complaining that Mozart’s music had “too many notes,” the NEA refusing to fund an artist whose work isn’t politically correct, or Dickens’ readers demanding a happy ending to Great Expectations, outside control is inimical to art. An artist must be free to obey only his muse and the inherent laws of his art form if he is to do his best work. He must also have “world enough and time” to let his imagination run free, which means—guess what—no day job.

What’s the solution? Unfortunately, I have no idea. Unless someone can invent a specialized time machine that will bring the future profits from a work back into the present to feed the artist while he’s still alive, instead of enriching others after his death.

Or—here’s a radical thought—the profits of works that are selling now, whose creators and their immediate heirs are long dead, could be set aside in a foundation that would provide grants to living artists. Hey, I like that idea. I’m sure Jane Austen would be happy to support me, instead of just a bunch of publishers and filmmakers, with the posthumous profits of her work. (Jane paid for her own publishing and never made her money back while she was alive.)

But since the people who are living parasitically off the works of dead artists are not too likely to give up that self-appointed privilege voluntarily, I expect the majority of artists will have to go on starving, or else expending the best hours and years of their lives doing something that puts bread on the table so they can pursue their art in the wee hours of dawn or midnight while the rest of the world is asleep. Maybe this builds character. In my personal experience, it builds stress, exhaustion, and much less than one’s best work.

But what the hey—it’s Tradition!

I was stuck for a subject today, so I took one of WordPress’s prompts: Talk about your favorite words. Here are a few of mine.

Widdershins. It means “counterclockwise,” and it’s the way water goes down the drain in the Southern Hemisphere. I found it in a nonfiction book by Madeleine L’Engle, possibly Walking on Water. I love it for its sound, and for its going-against-the-flow-ness, and because it makes me think of Australia and New Zealand, where I hope to travel someday.

Sequacious. This one is courtesy of John Gardner, probably in On Moral Fiction. It means “intellectually subservient,” and it describes our whole culture so succinctly.

Mellifluous. Can’t you tell what it means just by the sound of it? If not, go look it up.

Brillig. (If you don’t know where that one comes from, stop reading this blog and go read Through the Looking Glass. Immediately.) I’m not sure exactly what Lewis Carroll meant by brillig, but to me it describes a cold, clear autumn day when the red and golden leaves crunch under your swishing feet and the naked twigs are etched in intricate patterns against the stark, pale afternoon sky. (Yes, all of that.)

Elúndina. Okay, I made that one up, but for a good reason—it’s part of the vocabulary of the world I invented for my current novel, The Dome-Singer of Falenda. Elundina are powerful spiritual beings that materialize out of light and look like bodiless butterflies.

How about you? What’s your favorite word?

I just returned yesterday from a week-long writing retreat with some wonderful fellow writers on the Oregon coast. No speakers, no program, just lots of time to write and a chance to read our stuff to some great supportive critics. Oh yes, and the beach. Very important ingredient—walks on the beach.

I’ve been doing this every spring/early summer for five years now, and I’ve come to regard it as indispensable to my writing life. Lots of people talk up writers’ conferences, where you can meet other writers, listen to sage advice from the more successful ones, schmooze with agents and editors, etc. And I like conferences too. They’re useful, they’re informative, they’re energizing, you make lots of great new friends and contacts, and I’ve heard they even lead to agent contracts and book deals for some people—though not yet for me.

But a conference is no substitute for a retreat. A retreat is an escape from all obligations and distractions (especially if your location is internet-free, as ours was). It leaves you alone with that most fickle of friends, your imagination. If you’ve been out of touch for a while, you may have to woo it back, as the Little Prince did with the fox. But once you’ve got it, it’s like a honeymoon: nothing in the world you have to do except be together and see what germinates. Sometimes a honeymoon leads to a baby. Sometimes a retreat leads to a new book (or at least a good start on one).

That’s what happened for me this year. For the last eight or nine months, I’d been sweating over the planning stages of a novel that just didn’t seem to want to come together. I was almost dreading the retreat, because I feared it still wouldn’t come together and my sweet week would be wasted. But a week or two before I was to leave, a different—completely different—idea that had sprung up a couple of years ago came back and tapped me on the shoulder, saying, “Remember me? What about me?”

So I went on retreat and listened to this different idea. It had plenty to say—about 21,000 words’ worth in the course of the week. I hardly had to do anything except move my fingers on the keyboard. Of course, this is first draft material, and we all know what Anne Lamott had to say about that. (In case you don’t, it involves the “s” word.) So it’s possible that a lot of those words won’t survive the editing process. But still—21,000 words is a darn good start.

And not only do I have the solid beginning of a middle-grade fantasy novel under my belt (yeah, like I said, completely different from anything I’ve written before), but I also feel like a writer again, instead of an editorial/familial/volunteer drudge with no time or energy to think a creative thought. I have the momentum I need to keep writing and eventually finish something. I also have the encouragement of my wonderful writer friends to get back in the ring and keep submitting The Vestibule of Heaven, my commercial literary novel that’s been gathering rejections since last fall. Without that retreat, I would have none of these things.

So if you’re a writer, or a creative person of any stripe, be sure to give yourself the occasional gift of some time away from the daily grind to pursue your art. It doesn’t have to be a whole week, and it doesn’t have to be terribly far from home (though I recommend a distance of at least 50–100 miles or so, so that you have a little transition time and so that you can’t be expected to run back for any reason). It doesn’t have to be with other writers, although sharing a space can be economical as well as mutually encouraging.  All you need is a comfortable, quiet place and enough time to get your brain out of everyday life and into that magic world where anything can happen.

No matter how guilty you feel at leaving your family, DO NOT yield to any entreaties to take them along. A retreat and a family vacation are two VERY different things. Your family will get along without you, probably better than any of you expect, and you will have much more to give them when you return, refreshed from drinking at that eternal well. (Note: Some people do fine bringing their also-creative spouses. I haven’t tried it myself.)

What about you? What have retreats done for you?

All writers, I suppose, have parts of the process that they love and others that they dread. For me, the dreaded part is getting from the raw idea stage to the place where I know enough about the story to begin writing. I’m at that place now with my WIP (work-in-progress, for the uninitiated).

I feel as if I’m standing at the edge of a precipice, with a great abyss yawning at my feet. On the other side of the abyss are the words “Chapter One” and everything that will follow them. In my hands I hold the shining sphere that is my perfect idea—perfect because I haven’t yet begun to flesh it out, a process that will inevitably tarnish it and bend it out of true. For now, it consists of a thousand thousand glittering strands, each one whole and precisely arced, none crooked or frayed or left hanging; and the whole sphere glows like a little sun, made in the image of the real sun as I am made in the image of the Creator.

My job is to build a bridge across the chasm at my feet: a bridge built on piles of research, with solid girders of story structure, paved with living planks of character development, knit together by a vivid sense of place, guided in its arc by a theme that pierces to the heart of truth. But I have to build this bridge one-handed, by the light of the shining sphere of my idea, which I must hold aloft at all times—for if it once touches the ground, it will dissolve into dust.

And then, when at last the bridge is complete, I have to step out in faith that it will hold. And here’s the kicker: I cannot carry the sphere across the bridge. I have to throw it over the abyss, and run across the bridge in time to catch it on the other side.

So you see, it’s not an easy task, this bridging, but one fraught with perils on every side. It’s a wonder, really, that anyone ever accomplishes it. And in fact, the sides of the abyss are snowy with the dust of ideas that did not survive the journey. Several of my own have ended there because their bridges wouldn’t hold.

But this sphere that I hold now really needs to make it across. So pray for me, my friends, and for all the bridge-builders of the world—for it is only the spheres that survive the journey that will ever be visible to any but their creators. And the world would be very much poorer without them.

Lately it’s been brought home to me how many opportunities the writing life offers me for growth in virtue.

First along the path comes humility. Each of us has that moment when we come out of the closet with the writing we’ve slaved so hard over and which, despite many misgivings, we really believe at some level is brilliant. Then someone reads it—someone, that is, who cares more for integrity in the work than for our feelings—and we find out how very far from brilliant it actually is. There may be some spark there, but it’s been all but buried in adverbs, clichés, and purple prose. (I never dreamed how many clichés existed in the English language until I began trying to write without them.) As we work to improve, the humbling comes at higher levels—instead of critique partners, we get agents and editors telling us our stuff stinks. Those who have attained the holy grail of publication have the privilege of being humiliated by critics and Amazon reviewers and bookstore customers who shun their signing table as if it were an IRS auditor’s desk. But it’s still the same thing: You’re never as brilliant as you think you are.

After the early lessons in humility comes the really big lesson: patience. It takes months, often years, to finish a novel. Then you have to wait for people to make time in their own full lives to read it and give you feedback, and then you go back and work on it some more. Lather, rinse, repeat until your hair falls out. Finally, you think the book is ready to see the light, and you start sending it to agents. These days, a month seems to be the minimum response time; two to three months is not uncommon, and many agents never respond at all. Even with a book that is absolutely ready for the big-time, finding an agent can easily take a year or more. Then the agent has to find you a publisher—and if agents are tortoises, publishers are giant sloths. If and when the book is finally sold, you may have to wait up to two years before it is published. And let’s not even talk about how long you wait to get paid.

Somewhere along this journey, you may easily stumble over that big rock in the road called “the market.” Maybe your book is the best thing since prepared mustard, but nobody is buying your genre right now. Or your vision seems just a little bit ahead of its time, and no one wants to take a risk on it. Sooner or later, someone—probably an agent or editor—is bound to suggest that you write something a little more salable. This seemingly innocent suggestion is really the Demon of People-Pleasing in disguise. This is where you have to renew the commitment I hope you started out with: You are going to write with integrity, to serve your art, not to please people. If you’re writing to please people, you may as well chuck it all in right now, because people are fickle; what they love today they may hate tomorrow. Some of the greatest artists of all time were not valued in their day. Imagine if Jane Austen had said, “Well, shucks, nobody likes these books I’m writing; maybe I should write Gothic thrillers instead.” She’d be no better known today than Ann Radcliffe, who was all the rage as a writer of Gothic thrillers back then.

And that leads to the last and biggest lesson I’m going to talk about today: letting go. Humility, patience, and integrity are all part of it: Ultimately, you have to let go of the reins of your own writing career and abandon yourself to the will of God, or the universe, or however you regard those forces larger than yourself that make things happen. You can write brilliantly and market your little heart out, but ultimately, success will come when it is meant to come and not one moment sooner.

I mentioned in my earlier post, “Riding the Wild Word,” that writers need each other. We need each other for support, encouragement, reassurance that even though we are in fact crazy, it’s somehow okay. And specifically, we need each other for honest, intelligent criticism of our work, generally referred to as “critique.”

Some people say that a writer is one who writes—as opposed to just talking about it at cocktail parties (or, these days, on the internet). I say that a writer is one who has subjected him/herself to critique and has profited by it. Until you’ve done that, you’re just messing around.

Getting critiqued is, of course, a two-edged sword—in more ways than one. (Does that make it a four-edged sword? Sorry, it’s too late at night for geometry.) First, while a good critiquer will always find something to praise, he or she will also find something to—well, criticize. You will discover that your work is not perfect. If you have any sense, you suspected as much to begin with, but perhaps you cherished a tiny fantasy that your critiquer would finish your book and cry, “This is the most fantastic thing I ever read! Don’t change a word! And by the way, let me introduce you to my agent.”

Enjoy that fantasy and let it go. Ain’t gonna happen.

When you get that criticism, first you say “thank you,” very politely and with gracious self-control. Then you go home, lock yourself in your bedroom, and cry your eyes out. After that, you drink some wine or eat some chocolate or pet the cat, and get down to the work of revising, which will one day make you a real writer.

The second way in which critique is two-edged is that there is good critique and bad critique. I don’t mean flattering vs. unflattering; we already covered that. I mean intelligent vs. clueless. Some people will read your work, understand what you were trying to do, and give you suggestions for how you can do it better. Other people will read into your work their own agenda and make suggestions that are completely off the wall.

It’s your job to tell the difference.

In the beginning, when you’re insecure and desperate for approval, you want to accept every suggestion and try to implement it. If you do that, your work either ends up looking like a crazy quilt, or it loses every spark of life because you’re trying to follow all the “rules.” Remember the old story about the old man, the boy, and the donkey going to market? You’ll end up carrying the donkey.

This approach usually palls the day you get two critiquers saying precisely opposite things. Then you’re stuck—you’ve got to trust your gut whether you want to or not. So you do, and in the process you learn that your gut is fairly trustworthy. Gradually you gain confidence, until you reach the point that you know almost immediately whether a given suggestion is garbage or gold.

And when you get to that point, a good critique becomes a real joy. You read it, and a suggestion nestles into your mind and you think, “Yes, of course! Why didn’t I see that before?” And then you start revising, and the new words slide so effortlessly into place that you know they were meant to be there all along, only for some reason you were too blind to see it. And then you kiss your critiquer’s feet and offer praise to God that your eyes have been opened.

Sometimes a good critique is the only thing that can pull a manuscript out of a stalemate in which you couldn’t bear to look at it for months on end. Sometimes, a good critique can save your writing life.

So when you find those few people who “get” your work, cherish them! Stand by them, buy them coffee, critique their work intelligently in return. We can’t pull ourselves up by our bootstraps in this business; but we can pull each other up.

Words are like horses: They know if you are their master. If they sense you are not in control, they’ll throw you, or bolt and take you where you do not wish to go. But if they sense your mastery, they will do your bidding, and you can choose anything from a quiet amble through the countryside to a wild gallop up hill and down dale.

Observers can sense the mastery too. Watching a skilled rider, we are caught up in her rhythm and grace; we can almost feel the play of the horse’s muscles beneath our own legs. But watching an amateur, we feel the awkwardness of every jolting step, the agony of the inevitable tumble, the humiliation and the fear.

Some people seem to be naturals with horses: They sit easily in the saddle and know instinctively how to relate to a horse. Others have to learn through hard work and practice, with many falls and remountings and saddle sores along the way. But the only thing that can stop you from learning is your own fear, laziness, or failure to persist. Natural talent is great, but it isn’t the only way.

How do you gain mastery over a horse? Some people do it through fear and violence, but this is likely to backfire; the best way is with gentleness and love. You spend time with the horse, feeding it, caring for it, talking to it, before you ever try to mount it. You gain its trust, you learn its idiosyncrasies, you adapt yourself to its gait. You become, in effect, its servant, and only then can you become its master.

When you are ready to ride, you start small, with just a lap around the paddock, building as you gain skills; you don’t try to take a six-foot fence your first time out. Nor do you enter a show or a competition until you’re sure of yourself and the horse–until the two of you can work and breathe as one.

Okay, so enough with the high-flown talk about something I really know very little about (if you do know about horses, please forgive me). What does this mean with respect to writing?

You have to be gentle with words, too. You have to get to know them well by reading, reading, reading. You have to pay attention to how the real masters use them–not the hacks, but the greats, whose mastery you can sense from the first paragraph. You have to learn the rules and internalize them before you can begin to break them to good purpose. You have to start small and build your skills. And you must, at all costs, learn patience and restrain yourself from sending your early unpolished efforts out into the world.

There’s one unfortunate but significant difference between riding and writing, though: You can’t be an incompetent horseback rider and not know it. If your technique is faulty or the horse doesn’t trust you, you will have the aches, bruises, and broken bones to prove it. Not so with writing. Amateur writing may cause pain, but most often that pain belongs to the reader on whom the amateur has foisted his stuff before it was ready. Here’s where the role of the trainer comes in.

If you want to get to the top of the equestrian tree (now there’s an image for you), you need a trainer–someone who can spot the subtler mistakes in your riding and help you to fix them. If you want to be a great writer–or even a passably good one–you need someone to perform that service for you, too. True writing mentors, unfortunately, are rare and tend to be expensive; most of us have to rely on books, the occasional workshop, and a critique group of our peers. But it is essential to get that training one way or another. A few great geniuses can do without it, but who’s to say that even Tolstoy might not have profited from a teacher, if there had been anyone better than he around to teach him?

One last parallel: As in every endeavor of life, no matter how much natural talent you have, you will fall, and fall, and fall. But you have not failed as long as you keep getting back up.