Balances

In many writing careers, perhaps even most, there is a tension between art and commerce, writing inside-out v. outside-in, writing as exploration and discovery v. writing as communication for remuneration. I began my own belated writing career (coming from mathematics) with a focus on art, expressed successfully as a short story writer (three "roll of honor" citations in Best American Short Stories) and unsuccessfully as a novelist (2 unpublished) but soon enough found myself in the school of hard knocks, trying to survive after dropping out of grad school, and embraced writing as commerce, first becoming editor of a trade newspaper and later a regular contributor and sometimes guest editor at Northwest Magazine (and much later editing an anthology from this period,
Oregon Fever).

After returning to school and getting an MFA in playwriting, I was able to exist with a rare focus on the artistic side of this tension, thanks mainly to a new skill in writing grants. But I had to return to writing as commerce eventually and became managing editor of a business magazine. Later I began teaching, which released writing energy for more non-commercial projects.

I bring all this up because I think today I have the best balance between art and commerce that is available to me. The only commercial writing I'm doing is screenwriting. I've returned to playwriting, where I have the most experience and success, in a series of posthumous plays in which I have absolute and total control. Whatever happens to them, if anything, happens after I'm not around to fret about it. I'm energized by learning a new craft, musical composition, which I plan to apply to drama. I'm shooting videos, another energizing and new craft. I'm teaching and enjoying it because what I teach actually can be taught (screenwriting).

Writing also has its frustrations. In the commercial world, you're not getting the income you want. In the artistic world, you're not getting the respect you want. What is curious if you work in many genres of writing as I do, is that your frustration (or lack of it) varies from genre to genre. I'm still a frustrated novelist, my own assessment of my work here greater than the evidence suggests; but in hyperdrama, for example, I have a solid international reputation and even am given credit for coining the term, which may or may not be true (it wasn't coined consciously -- I just started using it, can't remember the context). Overall, I think I deserve more respect than I get but I think most writers who aren't household words feel this way.

"Fame" is flighty, in any case. My own reputation certainly was stronger, or at least more visibly so, twenty years ago than now, even though my work is so much better now. I know of many other writers in the same boat, perhaps an extreme case being the late Robert Sheckley, a true giant in the Golden Age of Science Fiction, who was struggling at the end of his life to get published, who broke my heart in my last coffee visit with him when he asked if I knew of any cheap apartments to rent, he no longer could afford rent where he was. Robert Sheckley, for God's sake! Yes, fame is flighty.

You learn to live with what crumbs the gods drop for you. You learn to find the balance between art and commerce that works for you. You especially learn why the hell you're writing in the first place. And I've never been more content in the balance of all these balls in the air, or more content in the way my writing goes today. I'm still frustrated, of course, but that's part of the package. I suspect most writers think they're better than many more famous contemporaries. They also think they're worse. And that's another important balance to maintain.