If You Want to Make Money Writing, Just Don’t Think About Pink Elephants
By: Scott Leonardi
Tags: Creativity, Money, Creative Writing, Self-awareness, Writing

For those of us living paycheck to paycheck — as the majority of this country is — the idea of making a living doing what you love feels like some foreign fantasy land. A place reserved for those inside the magic mirror. A surreal place where people are happy and get paid to merely exist.

I’ve been one of those people my whole life. I’ve never made money doing anything I actually enjoyed doing.

For me, day jobs and shitty paychecks have been as much a part of life as bad weather and car accidents — they’re just a part of reality and there’s not much you can do about it. It’s not like I’m unaware of the option of working hard for a career that pays better, but I’ve always seemed to value my time over money. Then again, the more I say that, the more it sounds like an excuse for my laughable bi-weekly bounty.

With this in mind, for someone like me, seeing any indication that infusing my art with my finances is actually working feels as if I’m entering a world of miracles. A world where people are rewarded for being themselves, and if you’re able to sharpen your senses enough to tune out the world and focus on your craft, you will be rewarded with a life unbound to convention and the systemic suppression of individuality.

I know it’s an exaggeration, and I know that individuality has its limits, but as someone who’s been burnt out in the menial job market for years, financial freedom through integrated artistry and personal responsibility feels like an Olympian-level achievement.

I’m not saying it’s everything, or that I would magically feel fulfilled as a person, but that’s not my point.

What I’m saying is that when you find yourself in the world of art today — art in any form, mind you — it’s becoming increasingly difficult to set aside thoughts of money.

It really is a shame. It’s a hard truth, but our eye for beauty and the natural splendor of our artistic talent has been tainted by the Almighty Dollar.

Trying to balance genuine creation and financial foresight on the tip of a pencil is a dangerous game to play, I know that.

The dangers involved are similar to the patients described in Viktor Frankl’s lauded book Man’s Search for Meaning who seem to be stuck in a state of “hyper-intention.” People who feel trapped in this state of mind are the sources of their own misery. They can’t help but focus so intensely on preventing a particular situation from occurring, that it’s their fear itself that causes the situation to occur in the first place.

In the book, he uses “paradoxical intention” to combat his patient’s fears. For a man whose fear of sweating too much would be what caused him to do just that, sweat too much, he was told to try and intentionally sweat as much as possible. A mere week later, the patient returned claiming that this exaggerated intention allowed him to let go of his anxiety and, in turn, prevented him from his excessive perspiring. It was his willingness to change his attitude and detach through a lens of openness and good humor about himself that allowed this phenomenal cure.

Now, as artists it may not be in our best interests to intentionally create the worst art imaginable in an attempt to somehow overcome our “ailment” of Not-Making-Money, but it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard for getting over yourself and your perfectionism when it comes to creative and financial anxiety. Because as far as our hyper-intention goes, I’d say there’s an abundance of guilty parties here.

Some people try so hard to “make” something of themselves they don’t realize how much they’re actually holding themselves back from creating something authentic. Isn’t it always the case that the harder we try, the harder it feels? The more we hyper-focus on monetary gain from our art, the less we’re ever satisfied and the more our art suffers?

The people who warn against thinking about the money are mostly right. When it’s the only thing on your mind, the further away that goal will pull from you ever being able to reach it. It’s only when we allow ourselves to relax and not take ourselves or our goals so seriously that we begin to feel as if we’re making genuine progress in our craft.

There’s always the potential of sabotaging both your art and your bank account when attempting to braid them together. But I also don’t think it’s necessarily oil and water we’re talking about here. It’s not an impossible feat to compartmentalize these facets of yourself, and with enough practice, it becomes easier to manage.

I don’t think you have to sacrifice artistic integrity just because there’s a fly in the room shaped like a dollar sign. You can still be genuine in your craft without getting distracted by occasional buzz. Perhaps when that fly evolves into a large bird with dollar bills for wings flapping and squawking in your face while you’re trying to be creative, then it’ll be time to open the window and let that bugger out.

Just be authentic in your voice and in your actions. There’s no guarantee you’ll ever be rewarded for anything you create, but that’s not the point of creation in the first place. Maybe your work will be recognized one day, maybe not. That shouldn’t be the guiding force of your creative motivation, but in this day and age you’d be forgiven if you found it hard to not think about it at all.

Money itself isn’t important when it comes to creation. It has no inherent value other than what we’ve given it. However, it is a tool, and tools make building a life and providing for yourself a hell of a lot easier.

Life itself is art. Of course, you want to create and contribute to life’s artistry in the same way it created and contributed you. You yourself are a work of art and wanting to live in accordance with creation itself through creation itself is only natural.

Wanting to infuse these two opposing forces is difficult, but not impossible. You just have to be aware of when one side is bleeding too much into the other.

Different tools were made for different reasons. As long as we can differentiate our financial tools from our artistic ones, we should be able to stay in decent psychological shape.

It’s just that, with the world being what it is today, telling me that the only way to make money by creating something authentic and meaningful is to not think about the money, well, sometimes I can’t help but feel like I’m being told that all I have to do is not think about pink elephants.