Who are you? What are you? How do you define yourself? These questions always come to mind when someone asks me, “What do you do?” The intent of this question is generally to ask, “What kind of work do you do?”, but the answer ends up defining me to some extent, and I don’t like that definition. I am not, as I said in my Facebook profile, just a low-level bureaucrat working for the state government. I know that I am much, much more.
The summer 2011 issue of Creative Nonfiction had an interview with Susan Orlean (the author of The Orchid Thief) in which she said about her students, “I’m a little astonished by the lack of ambition and the lack of savvy about going about a writing career.”
A few days ago, I read a piece in the on-line Hippocampus Magazine in which writing teacher and author Donna Steiner lamented that so many of her writing students wanted to jump right into being published. She wants her students to slow down and savor the process of learning to write well, to enjoy reading works by great writers. She said, “As a poet and essayist, the concept of selling my work is exactly that: a concept. Over the 20 or so years I’ve been publishing, I’ve only rarely received financial compensation. Just about every writer I know, including those who have published books, would say the same thing.”
The October 24 reading in The Artist’s Way Every Day by Julia Cameron said, “We have to free ourselves from determining our value and the value of our work by that work’s market value. The idea that money validates credibility is very hard to shake. If money determines real art, then Gauguin was a charlatan.”
A few weeks ago, I was talking with an acquaintance about the Kachemak Bay Writer’s Conference held in Homer every year. I plan to attend next summer, and he was noting that his wife had gone in the past and had really enjoyed it. Someone else, eavesdropping on our conversation, asked, “Is your wife a writer?” He smiled a bit self-consciously and replied, “Well, she writes.” I know the wife we were discussing and am quite confident that she would call herself a writer, even though she may never have been published, let alone paid for her writing.
I struggle with the above conversation because it makes me wonder when I am “allowed” to define myself in the way I want. We Americans are so caught up in a money culture; if we aren’t getting paid for what we do it doesn’t really count. It goes beyond simple payment, though. If we aren’t making a living from a particular activity, it doesn’t really count. So, although I have been paid a couple of times for my writing and get paid occasionally for my fused glass work, I am not (nor probably ever will) earning a living from those activities. Do I have any right, therefore, to call myself a writer or an artist?
I would guess that Julia Cameron and Donna Steiner would say yes, I have every right to call myself a writer and an artist, even if I never again am paid for my work. I’m not so sure what Susan Orlean would say. Her statements in the interview would imply that I need to work on marketing myself, never my strong suit.
The pamphlet for the current Valdez Museum and Historical Archive exhibit “Shimmer and Sparkle” included a list of Valdez Artists. My name was on that list. I exclaimed to my mom, “Look, I’m an artist! It says so right here, so it must be true!” I’ve commented on my need for external validation before; clearly this was another example of that need. Julia would be very disappointed. The quote I copied above went on to say, “We must learn that as artists our credibility lies with us, with God, and with our work. In other words, if you have a poem to write, you need to write that poem – whether it will sell or not.”
I am an artist. I am a writer.
How do you identify yourself? How would you identify yourself if there was no expectation of external validation – money or acclaim?
