Is a Creative Life Better?

The most successful and talented artist that I've ever met, sent me an email this week.  He wrote "As you know, one of the problems with art is finding time.  A lack of energy and everyday dilemmas don't help."  He went on to ask "Does creative work make our lives better? When young I had no doubts..... The price for a life in art is high, the wages low."

His question "Does creative work make our lives better?" has been nagging at me ever since I read the email.  It hit home with me, especially when he mentioned "a lack of energy and everyday dilemmas."

Today, for instance, was a crazy, fucked up day at work.  I've worked 13 days in a row.  I'm scheduled to work at least the next seven days too.  I'm beyond tired.  My knees hurt.  The skin on my hands is dry and I have at least a dozen painful cracks around the nails and joints of my fingers.  My feet are tired.  My lower back is sore.  In addition to the long days on the factory floor, I'm dealing with constant requests for higher child support.  I'm in the middle of two different appeals on those matters now.  There will be court dates in the near future. 

So, why do I do this?  Does writing make my life better?  I haven't earned any money from writing in several years.  I haven't managed to get anything published.  Is writing worth the effort for me?  I make a decent hourly wage at my job.  I have great health insurance.  My wife and I enjoy a solid middle class living.  So why do I keep working on my writing?  What if I put all of this work and effort into writing and I never find any acclaim?

I am a writer.  Writing is part of who I am.  I wrestled with calling myself a writer for too many years.  Somehow, during those years of wrestling, I managed to amass quite the collection of original poetry.  I have completed a handful of short stories and I've written the beginning of at least 12 novels.  Two or three of those novels are 30-60 pages long.  I write several days a week, no matter how hard I toil in the factory, no matter how tired I am in the evening.  I often write when I don't feel like writing.  But why do I do this?  Why writing, where getting published is difficult and the competition is fierce?  Why tonight, when I could be laying in bed, vegging out with my beautiful wife and watching a movie?

There is something inside of me that drives me to write.  There are stories inside of me that I think should be told, emotions that are best expressed by writing words, ideas that I want to share.  I write because I am not a talented painter.  I can not sing very well.  I can't dance.  I can only play a couple of chords on the guitar.  I have no other means of creative expression other than tapping away on my laptop, scribbling on paper with my pen.  I write several nights a week, knowing that the things that I write won't be everyone's cup of tea.  I write consistently, because the more I write, the better I write and I know that if I ever want to earn a paycheck with my writing, I'm going to have to write better than the competition.  I read the competition.  I read their poems, their short stories, their novels and I know that I have a long way to go, a large gap to close, to get to their level.

Is it worth it?  Is it worth putting this much effort into creative expression?  Is it worth spending tired evenings trying to tell a story, knowing that the cost is high and the payout low?  Yes.  I have to believe it is, or I'd slowly stop doing it.  Perhaps when I'm old and I've spent all of these years writing, I will have a different opinion.  Next week when I log on to write the next weekly column, I will see how many people have viewed this one.  It varies from week to week.  Some weeks there are as few as 25 viewers, other weeks as many as 70.  I keep writing these columns anyway, because it helps keep me writing when I don't know what else to write.

That successful artist that sent me the email?  He's my Father-in-Law.  When I don't feel much like writing, I recall the stories that my wife tells me about him.  The stories of how he worked all day, then came home and painted all evening, often seven days a week.  These stories of his work ethic inspire me to keep working.

Despite all of his success, he's still sending me notes, encouraging me, an unknown blue collar writer, to keep writing, all the while asking himself if a creative life makes life better.  Yes sir, it does.  At the end of the day, when I near the end of life, I don't want to be known as "Dan who worked at Jeep."  I hope that I'll write well enough and often enough, that someone will remember me as "Dan the writer, the author, the poet."