Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles

"This is a really great book about being an artist, and making art, no matter the outcome. Her book is really rebelling against that idea that if you don’t quit your day job and make money from your art, you shouldn’t bother. No: it’s OK to keep your day job, and it’s OK if things don’t immediately start making money. Your art is worth something. The time you spend making it is worth something. Beth says we should all make art, even in our spare time. It really reminded me of reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert back in 2015. It’s really encouraging—a person reminding you that making art can bring you joy. It doesn’t have to be about other people. It’s really a sort of manual, a bit of a guidebook. It covers absolutely everything. It really looks about the hurdles that people face. She talks about fear of self-promotion and fear of marketing. Dealing with the pain of rejection. I love that she busts a lot of myths. For example, one thing that people think is that you need a lot of time to make something. People will say: if I only had six months, I would write a novel. Well, actually, if you had six months of doing nothing, I actually think that might be worse for your writing. You’ll just say, ‘oh well, I’ll do it tomorrow.’ For me, my books aren’t written in week-long staycations by the sea or months away from other work, but in short regular pockets of time e.g. 1 hour in a cafe or in bursts of 25 minute Pomodoro sessions. The obsession with wanting long stretches of free time can get in the way. Exactly. Having too much thinking time hasn’t been great for me. If I sit around, I can reflect on the problems with what I’ve just written. But if I’m busy, I can’t dwell on it too much. Similarly, some people think that if they had all the money in the world, you’d write the great American novel. But she breaks down why that isn’t the answer. For example, someone she knows has a big inheritance and a lot of time, and the woman has been trying to write this novel. But the grief from this death in the family is causing problems. There are other examples of this: people who, on paper, have a perfect environment, but it just hasn’t worked. So it’s very uplifting. I reminds you that no matter what you have, you can do something with it. I interviewed Jessie Burton for my podcast a few months ago . She wrote The Miniaturist in and around her job as an executive PA. Obviously I don’t want to romanticise that, because it’s really hard, and not everyone can have that energy at the end of the day to put into something else, but the idea of someone writing for 20 minutes on their lunch break and actually producing something of importance in literature is really inspiring to me."