Discussion → Is the writer an entrepreneur?
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Malcolm Gladwell has a piece in The New Yorker a week or two ago about entrepreneurs (http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2010-01-18#folio=024), in which he describes that type of person variously as a risk-averse predator monofocused on a particular kind of puzzle, willing to risk social opprobrium over professional reputation to do what he/she does. Reading it—IMHO not one of MG's more riveting pieces—it struck me that there was a lot in common with writers. I'm curious what others think.
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Good question. It does come down to choices, doesn't it? What are you willing to risk? Exactly who are you willing to be risking it for? Perhaps, it's a what. I mean we get to be here, to do this, for only so long. This isn't a dress rehearsal,it's the real thing. But no one's pushing you onto the stage or into the spotlight either.The risk you take is that you may not ever get heard, or you may get completely ignored, or you might actually get heard and then expectations could get heaped upon you that you didn't want. From talking to many different people from all walks of life fame seems to be something to be entirely avoided if at all possible. Many simply cannot handle it. As a writer it comes always begging for the next story, the next poem, the next play, the next word.What are you doing now? Fame is impatient to the extreme, it's a risk built into the task of creating things out of words. But it could quickly consume you like a ton of army ants, unless you bring to the risk a little courage and perhaps some wisdom, some humility and certainly some ego. You're going to need it.I agree with Brian Wilson of the Beach-boys--"Hang onto your ego." You're trying to make a living out of something you want to sell to others, either for money or time or both.That's quite a risk to take considering that there are no guarantees that anyone will give a damn.
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Come on, Gary. Post your thoughts. I was not, actually, thinking of the whole you-gotta-have-a-platform thing. I was thinking more along the lines of personality types. But it was interesting to think about it, especially in light of the essay in yesterday's NYTBR about the DIY book tour (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/books/review/Elliott-t.html?ref=books).
Is participation here part of establishing a platform?
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Thanks for starting this thread, Steve...Gladwell's characterization of the 'bold, risk-taking entrepreneur' as a mythical figure is definitely relevant to a conversation about writers.
I think of Jack Kerouac, who may have been less the bold, risk-taking figure that pop culture has made of him than the earnest, introspective drinker who spent most of his life at home with his mother.
The fact is that writers often are bold, but they are also keenly observant and self-aware, and thus their boldness is mitigated; it lacks the purity that belongs to the utterly rebellious. And so, we get Sal Paradise (the writerly follower) and Dean Moriarty (the non-writerly leader).
Similarly, I'm put in mind of the following piece of advice to writers, from Flaubert:
"Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work."
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My sister calls herself an entreprenueur. She reads Gladwell, and read this, and is glad to know that entrepreuneurs are risk-averse, as she feels herself to be as a (good) painter-turned-children's clothing designer.
I read in the middle until I got to Naegele. Local business.
Edward, what a smooth reply!
"Are you thrifty in your originality, saving it for art, or do you dispose of it in your daily life?"
--Cynthia Ozick
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so much here...thanks stephen for starting this and also for sharing the DIY novelist's account - this example reminds me of an extremely successful "music at home" series of concerts started by one of my ex-students where musicians performed in people's homes to great acclaim and with, by now, considerable commercial success. a completely different take on "indie art".
stephen’s sharpened question: “Is participation here part of establishing a platform?” gets an absolute, resounding “yes” from me. i'd add: there's never been a better time to do this than now.
recap: i started down this route pretty much one year ago using a wordpress-hosted blog at first, then moving my blog (a sort of notebook of first drafts, now mixed in with records of published pieces) to a self-hosted site while in parallel pursuing twitter, facebook, second life (a virtual 3d world ripe with entrepreneurial activity) and fictionaut last. since i’m an online pro (i was one of the original developers of the WWW), doing the technical work didn’t pose a great problem so that i could focus on my ‘artistic vision’, which i had tied (by instinct rather than reason) to the fictitious persona of ‘finnegan flawnt’, whom nobody knew because he didn’t exist before i created him. attempts to kill flawnt and out myself were strongly opposed by fans in the past. i don't think that my real character could have done what flawnt did - he was an empty canvas, and online audiences like empty canvases almost as much (if not more) than the oprahs and kutchers of this world who draw on their offline fame in the online world (and hence are not really applicable to our topic).
it is really too early to draw any conclusions (see footnote below) but both beach boys (via d.p.) and flaubert (via ed m.) speak the truth: steadiness and order are as important as hanging on to one’s ego. the writer as online entrepreneur in my view and recent experience is a regular entrepreneur - he’s neither risk-averse (doing anything new is a risk, not doing anything new is not entrepreneurial) nor a gambler (which implies too little control to make potential investors feel cuddly and cared about).
i must admit that i don’t understand the remark on ‘willing to risk social opprobrium over professional reputation’ but i did not read the original article by gladwell, whom i appreciate as a populariser, but who’s too successful to be trustworthy as a kassandra (and too methodically sloppy).
(long) footnote: synchronicity rules! for me this topic is extremely timely because (as i mentioned in another discussion) i'm actually (supposedly) a scholar in this line of reasoning and practice. i'm in the process of writing a research proposal for my sabbatical (winter 2010) and i have chosen 'online writing' and 'online publishing' as my centre of attention with the new web 2.0-ish situation of the content creator as provider and the content consumer (or 'prosumer' as we're now called) as a peer reading/reviewing/re/writing, and a whole raft of new business models springing up around the grass patch formerly occupied by a hollow-eyed writer, with his agent in a suit and his big-money editor overlooking many hungry artists on similar patches from a safe distance. a model doomed to die as publishers world-wide know very well. as mentioned before, i have an opportunity, via my connections with the publishing industry, to drum up a fair amount of attention for this research (insert spin-off fantasies here).
i've been thinking about a number of options to create a case study lushly flanked by : (1) creation of an online lit mag complete with very large group of readers/buyers/writers; (2) writing/editing/publishing/selling of an online novel; (3) using fictionaut as a scholarly example of online writing community development; (4) using my own online journey, sketched above, as a starting point to look at “social media to create a commercial and artistic platform” for a writer.
of these three, (1) has the greatest energy at present (also because i have 2 friends interested in joining me), (2) is the most selfish solution cuz i’m at it anyway (except: i’m not at a creative writing dept but at a business school otherwise this would be a no-brainer), and (3) seems attractive but there’s a lack of data (and control) on my side which may make it impossible to go this route. (4) is where i have the most data to begin with but these data are perhaps too tied to my own person (thereby creating a possible conflict of interests).
what do you think about my conundrum? (feel free, please, to answer this secondary question as a corollary to stephen’s question because ‘artistic entrepreneurship’ really is the backdrop of my planned project).
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oops. i meant to write a paragraph or two, honestly, i did. got carried away by my own momentum there. unforgivable anti-platform-creating mistake.
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FF - that's quite a project you're undertaking...all options sound interesting. I like them all, especially #3, though as you say the specific data might be hard to come by. One way of understanding F'naut (and other online communities) might be by observing how its function changes in relation to its size.
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I have over the years done business with artists and for the most part I find that they tend to be naive about business. If they are entrepreneurs then they tend to be inept and dysfunctional ones.
There are certainly exceptions, but when say one hires a mural artist to repair a tesserae wall at a police kiosk there is a whole lot of baggage that comes with the individual that needs to be managed way beyond most business-to-business arrangements. The stone carver that you line up work for then find out that they have flown off to Austria, and you had only spoken with them a few days before. The metal sculptor that you hire as a welder who constantly nags about the materials needed to build a skylight and is constantly pissing about the need to pay off their school debt. I avoid going so far as to do business with the likes of the artist that develops their platform by eating the wall of their apartment as an art happening. I am intrigued by the one who goes around collecting up dead animals and sewing them together... he has arguments with taxidermists.
There is a great amount of risk involved, from my perspective of my need of a controlled result of a project that an end-client will be happy to pay for the work when completed as promised, that the artist will go off on some tangent, or a bender, or take forever in a quest for perfection. Such things as idealism, a mosh of fairly odd and self-debilitating attitudes toward profit, a near religious disdain of 'capitalism', an outlandish dollar value, or a sense that marketing is only about selling snake oil will inhibit the artist in their career. It is difficult to build a platform if one consistently undermines all those elements that go into building a platform... such a simple item as to have the discipline to show up on the day when everyone is expecting for the artist to show up.
I am fairly sure that these behaviors do not occur in a risk/no-risk determination, but in a logic external to any consideration of risk whatsoever, in a sort of lived-out martyrdom to an idealism got off from upside-down cereal boxes read in childhood. Or that people can be highly creative but not very bright about day-to-day functionality at the same time. Or that people can be simply not very bright and we mess with their self-vision at our own personal risk. Despite my observation of these tendencies I have found it to be an interesting business niche to interface between the variegated world views of artists and a world of commerce that has no patience to deal with the artist at all.
I consider business with writers more complicated than with artists in general as writers tend to come with bodies of thought-patterns-in-words attached. Whereas an environment can be structured for an artist to be channeled toward a desired end result, and managed, a writer will tend to think something is going on and will be compelled in some manner to engage in a discussion... if only through notes of correspondence writ on the john walls. Lest I be misunderstood, I believe that all of this is incredibly neat and would never want it to be otherwise. But in business, in the entrepreneurial game, there is usually the expectation on the part of the end-client of a pre-defined deliverable. This expectation is one reason that writers get stuck in a rut... for example, Vachel Lindsay may have been driven to suicide because he was sick to death of performing The Congo. ("They tried to get me - I got them first!")
In closing, I am reminded that I met Roy Lichtenstein a few years before he died, an example of an artist who did understand business, when I had to interface with him and his crew in order to get from him a letter of permission to work on his neighbor's wall above his roof. He seemed like a nice enough fellow.
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awww, GO, brilliant. thanks for sharing those thoughts and experiences.
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