Because you're worth it?

An interesting double take on literary prizes.

Lionel Shriver’s 2005 novel We Need to Talk About Kevin has received the public vote as the most popular previous Orange Prize winner.  Nevertheless, she's very disparaging about the value of literary awards in this article in the Independent last week.

Even more to the point, she's hesitant about recommending a career as a writer, saying:

I'm very sympathetic to aspirant writers. It's very difficult and there are no guarantees that cream will ever rise to the top.

It'd be totally hypocritical to discourage people from joining my profession, which was good to me in the end, but I have qualms about being encouraging. The odds are stacked against you. I want to give people enough of an idea of the capriciousness of the industry.

Michele Roberts, one of the Orange prize judges, conducts a robust defense of literary awards in this article, also in the Indie.

But she too is relentlessly downbeat about the realities facing authors, saying:

Deciding to write means volunteering for poverty: 20 years ago, publishers might offer certain well-known writers six-figure advances on sales and could afford to be reasonably generous to some of the less well known. Those times are over.

Nowadays, many authors augment their meagre incomes from writing by taking on whatever freelance work they can get, or by teaching. A joyful acknowledgment that you write from a sense of vocation, driven by single-minded devotion to language, image-making, storytelling, co-exists with a sense of belt-tightening, an increase in the sheer bloody-mindedness necessary for survival as an artist. 

When I conduct workshops, I always have a section that I call 'managing expectations'.  On the one hand, I don't want to destroy dreams and hate the idea that someone might feel so discouraged to hear how high the odds are stacked against them that they feel there's no point in continuing to write. 

On t'other hand, I still get MSes for edit in which the covering letters state that the author 'just' wants to pay off their mortgage or take early retirement and write full time.  Clearly, it would be wrong of me not to balance their expectations with a reality check, however unwelcome that might be.

If someone decides that there's no point in writing on the grounds that there's such a minuscule chance of achieving fame and fortune, I suspect they were never truly committed in the first place. 
You can write and hold down an unrelated job. 
You can earn money by doing other related work.
You can grow your own veg and shop at Lidl.
There are ways to survive, if you're prepared to set your priorities accordingly.

Yes, there's a payoff.  Rent still has to be paid, food still has to be put on the table.  We seem to have returned to the concept of the starving artist in the garret boiling up old shoes to make soup.  Progress, eh?

But if you're prepared to accept the likelihood of poverty ...

... and you have the hide of a rhino ...

... and you realise that this road will be bumpy and you have to watch out for the potholes ...

... and have the energy to climb back out of those you fall in along the way ...

... I genuinely believe there can be no more rewarding way to live a life.  

Those highs when your writing takes wings ... when your characters take you in surprising directions ... when you slap yourself on the head, yelling, 'Of course!' ... when you sit back and reflect that you have created an entire world and populated it with an eclectic cast drawn from inside your own head ... when you fall in love with a particular phrase or image ...

Ah, there's nothing like it.

If the price to pay is eating pasta five nights a week and a minimal social life (apart from lit events - lots of them!) then so be it. I'm in. 

And anyway, there are still those amazing stories of people who make it to the big time, even though they are few and far between.

As the old lottery slogan used to say, 'It could be you!'