250 Words on Tough Jobs

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

“There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
—attributed to Ernest Hemingway (but maybe not actually by him).

The Tortured Artist is an archetype. Creativity is agony, but that agony yields exquisite beauty. 

Well . . . maybe if you’re Hemingway, Van Gogh or Plath.

I had other careers before becoming a professional cartoonist in my forties, and one perspective I gained from that late start was that a bad day writing and drawing is better than most good days doing those other jobs. 

I see it like this: In a previous career, I was a journalist. If I got a story wrong, I could ruin a life or a business. Later, I was an environmental chemist. If I did an analysis wrong, I could endanger public health.

One of my sisters was a registered nurse. If she made a mistake, a patient could die.

A college friend analyzed terrorism for the CIA. If he made a mistake, thousands could die.

Making art takes thought and skill but it ain’t curing cancer or fighting terrorists. Don’t be too precious about it. If I have a bad day writing or drawing, I toss my disappointments into the bin. I’d like to do it well and be successful, but if I fail? Nobody dies. Nobody cares. Nobody gets hurt but me. 

Create art or don’t. If it’s such agony, find something else to do. The world will still spin and life’s too short.

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