Perseverance or Insanity? The Life of an Artist

How to know when it's time to give up

I often deliver a talk called How Writers Make Money, which I begin with a joke: they don’t. But the near-impossibility of making a living as an artist is not really a joke.

A few weeks ago, I lost my job. Well, not technically; I’m still employed but have had my hours cut by 80% due to changes made by the federal government to student visas, resulting in a massive decline of enrolments from international students.

Like many writers—who make very little money from writing books—I was teaching at university; and like many academics, I was casually employed, which means that my hours can be cut without notice.

As a single person, my income is the only income supporting my household, and right now, that income is not even enough to cover my rent, let alone food, bills or other necessities for myself and my son.

Creative Australia’s recently-published Artists at Work report, which analyses economic and working conditions across the arts sector in the last five years, found that working artists earn an average income of $54,500 a year, 26 per cent below the national average.

Professor David Throsby, the report's lead researcher and co-author noted that "In terms of education … training and experience, [artists] have the same level of qualifications as managers and professionals in the workforce, but they earn about half as much as other professionals."

A spokesperson for the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts acknowledged “that artists and arts workers often face difficulties in making a living, including insecure and intermittent work, and the challenges of working multiple jobs.” No shit!

The loss of most of my income during a period when the costs of living are sky high sent me into a panic. I frantically updated my CV, set up job searches on Seek, and pestered my academic contacts in courses less affected by the downturn in international students. Following this initial anxiety-induced flurry of activity, I sank into a depression. I feel so very very tired of trying to make a living as an artist, of working in the ‘gig economy’, of cobbling together an income from bits and pieces; of having no job security, no sick leave, no holiday pay.

The sacrifices I have made in order to pursue writing might seem more worthwhile if I was having success in my writing career. But it is now a decade since my last novel was published. I spent four years writing a novel which attracted a high-profile agent, who encouraged my to write a prequel. After writing the prequel—a further four years’ work—the agent was no longer interested. Eventually, when I signed with a top US agent, I thought my big ‘break’ had finally come. But my agent was unsuccessful in selling the novels I had spent eight years writing.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.*

~Rita Mae Brown, civil rights campaigner and feminist writer

*A quote often mistakenly attributed to Albert Einstein

For most people, investing almost a decade in a project which never saw the light of day might be a sign to give up and try something else. But many artists—myself included—embody the definition of insanity above. Despite my failure to find a publisher for my two manuscripts, I started writing a new novel.

Last week I read an interview in the LA Times with an actress called Julianne Nicholson reflecting on finally getting her big break after more than thirty years:

Around 2011, the [acting] parts started drying up. She was in her early 40s, fearful she’d been on the wrong path all along. She looked at her body of work and found it wanting.

“I totally messed up,” she remembers about that uncertain period and how she was thinking about it. “I gave all this time to something that’s not going to ultimately be the thing I hoped it might be.”

This quote really resonated with me. For twenty years I’ve made my writing the focus of my career, at the expense of other opportunities. I’ve always felt that eventually it will ‘pay-off’ in some way. But in the face of this latest debilitating blow to my financial security, I have started to seriously question my urge to keep writing in the face of failure. How many unpublished manuscripts; how many more years of living hand-to-mouth will it take before I decide I’ve had enough?

I asked Google: why do artists persevere despite failure? I was offered blog posts and articles full of platitudes about persistence, endurance, leaning in, pivoting; about failure teaching us more than success; about never giving up. But surely, there’s a point when it’s time to stop doing the same thing and expecting different results; to admit defeat? How do we know when that time has come?

Do you use writing prompts? They can be a fantastic way to overcome the fabled ‘terror of the blank page’, and can also allow us to experiment with new approaches to writing. When I’m reading, I often comes across lines which I think would make stimulating writing prompts, and moving forward I’ll be sharing some of those here. If you try them out, I’d love to hear from you about how it went.

Her drug of choice: terrible news. Nothing gave her mother more pleasure than hearing about the worst thing that ever happened to you, preferably in exhaustive detail, the more visually disturbing the better. The only metric she used to judge someone’s worth: had they suffered enough?

Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

Nothing gave [character] more pleasure than (hearing about)…

The only metric she used to judge someone’s worth: …

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Other things that have intrigued or entertained me lately

• NOVEL Hurdy Gurdy by Jenny Ackland: a fantastic Australian speculative-fiction about violence against women and how women support each other in desperate circumstances

• TV Dark Matter Mediocre science-fiction exploring the road not taken

• INTERVIEW Ann Lamott on love, sobriety and reaching 70 Loved this!

• SUBSTACK George Saunders: Poetic vs Prosaic George Saunders’ substack is a treasure trove. He is incredibly generous in responding to writers’ questions, and his answers are detailed and insightful.

What have you been reading, watching and listening to?