Recently, one of my favourite artists Grant Snider posted this comic:
This got me thinking about writing, and why I write. I write for various reasons now–to see my race represented, to write the stories that I didn’t have when I was younger, but more importantly, buried in the myriad reasons, I write because it’s fun, and I enjoy doing it. When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was to finish homework quickly and either watch television, read books, or write my own stories. Sometimes, I was even swept away by inspiration and I would write and draw my own stories.
Now that I’m a published writer and I have won an award, I want to write more and give more. I want to sell more books. Dare I type this–I want to win more awards, if possible, because sometimes, awards give writers a little boost.
And perhaps this comic is a timely reminder because I cannot write to aspire to win awards, approval, or recognition. I have to write for myself, first. I was talking to another writer friend of mine, Felicia, and she also wishes to go back to the times when she was only writing fanfic for the joy of it. For her and perhaps also for me, too, there was a time when we wrote fanfic and wrote it because we enjoyed it.
Back when I was a kid, I was naive enough to think that I could be a writer when I grew up. For a period of time, the toxic mantra of “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” pervaded the collective consciousness. It seems fairly innocuous and seems to make sense at first–when you enjoy your work so much, it doesn’t feel like it’s working, right?
However, when one attaches a dollar amount to a work of art, or submit something for an award, it is, in a sense, seeking approval from the public. No matter how much money is made, or how many awards are won, there will still be this inner beast that growls because one’s appetite for recognition can be insatiable. With money, a creator’s self-worth can be tied to the amount of books sold, the amount of awards won, and the amount of fans who come to see the creator talk about his or her work. Will this make him or her happy?
I don’t believe so.
There is so much push to be creative, to monetise our hobbies that we are good at that we ignore the pitfalls. If we monetise what we love, it is still work at the end of the day. It is an obligation, even if we want to do it. We may attach our self-worth to our jobs because we take so much pride in being able to produce something that is uniquely ours. We may end up hating our jobs or producing what we produce because our readers like the gimmicky, viral bits of our work and not our own original content. I see that happening with so many creators and I don’t want to lose that.
We live in a world that places so much importance on gauging your self-worth on how many hits you have, books you sell, or how much you churn out. We need to understand and know, deep inside ourselves, that we are enough, just the way we are. That alone is an idea that needs to be ingrained in us, whether we make a lot of money by creating or not.
And even if we don’t, we must be glad that we have the ability to create for ourselves, and that we are privileged enough to have spare time to enable us to express ourselves artistically in so many ways.