You Are a Real Artist Already

Don’t think you’re a “real” artist? Here I tell you why that’s bullshit.

I’ve always secretly doubted I’m a true creative. Sure, I was always doing art or writing stories as a kid, but I knew there were more talented kids out there. My best friend in high school was so obviously more artistically talented than me that I wasn’t sure if I admired her or was deeply jealous. Both! When I started writing seriously I remember saying to her that I know I’m no Milan Kundera – who was apparently the writer I thought at that time was one of the “real” artists. I thought I was just being realistic about my talents. But actually, how I saw myself was based purely on my own insecurities. I have always undersold myself and set the bar low.

Even while I dedicated myself to writing, I felt like I was pretending. So I sought out opportunities in life that I thought would help me develop a fulfilling (and money-making) career, and I kept my art on the back burner. I never stopped writing, but I didn’t prioritize it or fully commit to it. And predictably, I didn’t find success with it. That is to say, I didn’t get anything published. I came close a number of times, but the process of submissions and rejections was so demoralizing I eventually gave it up. And then one day I found I couldn’t write. I began to believe that maybe I wasn’t a writer anymore. Maybe I had never truly been one.

You’re reading this because I eventually came out of that dark place. And I learned some important lessons along the way I want to pass on to other creatives struggling with life choices and where their art fits in to it all. All these lessons fit a philosophy of creative living I call whole-life creativity. It’s what it sounds like: creativity that is the generative source of all you do, not an activity confined to the extra minutes left over. Creativity should be how you live every moment of your life. Let me explain.

Do Art to Live

I used to think my real life was the money-making work I did, and that my art, as sacred as it was to me, was something that I would have to do on my own time. Like a hobby. I knew I’d never make money off my fiction – I don’t write best-seller material – so I found jobs that included writing, thinking they would be the closest I’d come to supporting myself doing what I love. And I wasn’t wrong about that. What I was wrong about was how I valued my writing and prioritized it. 

See, I believed I would only qualify as real writer if I was “successful” at it – that is, I earned money from it. And I knew this would never happen with my fiction. Therefore, my fiction did not deserve to be what I prioritized in my life. Real life was the work-a-day life, and my fiction was like my shadow life. Real in my own heart, perhaps, but not in the eyes of the world. None of this made me a happy person. 

A couple pivots had to happen in my perspective for my misery living this way to lift. One, I had to completely divorce art from money. In fact, I had to outright reject the idea of earning any money at all with my writing. Once this link was decoupled, I was able to begin valuing my fiction for what it brought into my life. The joy of a dedicated practice of an art. Knowing I’m a real writer because and only because I sit down and write. Writing whatever the hell I want because probably no one’s going to read it anyway.

This first pivot naturally led to the second: Writing quickly became what feeds my life. I realized that before I had simply been doing art, and that now I was living art. My approach to writing became an embodiment of a new approach to life, one that was focused on experiencing it rather than milking all my time and effort for quantifiable results. The unexpected irony of this was that I ended up writing far more than I ever had before. In developing my whole life into a practice of creativity, something in me bloomed, and the words started coming back.

Once I realized that I needed to do art to live - and not the other way around, living to do my art - everything became clear. Writing is one way I choose to express my creativity, but it is just one part of a greater art: my life. The way I live my life day in and day out, from moment to moment, is my true art. My writing isn’t just something I do during a time I set apart. It is woven through all aspects of my day. A walk I take in the morning may inspire an afternoon writing fiction; that writing session may spark something I write here. The words are always there. I just need to be open to them and listen. The same is true of any creative endeavor. The ideas are already there - and the more you open your life up to be your greatest art, the more inspired you will feel in whatever you choose as your artistic craft.