Why Bother?

by Liz Zuercher

It’s the year of the lookie-loos at the Festival of Arts.  People just aren’t getting out their wallets.  It’s not going to be a banner year for sales.

The artists say the best compliment you can pay them is to buy their work.  If that’s the case, the compliments are few and far between this year, and that makes an artist question his work.  Isn’t it any good?  Doesn’t it have any value?  Have I completely missed the mark?  What was the point of all that work? Why should I even bother?

Why even bother is a question my writer friends and I have been discussing lately.  Like the Festival artists we spend a lot of time honing our craft, struggling with the right way to express our creative vision.  We write and rewrite and rewrite some more.  Then we send the work out into the world and hope for someone to see its worth, to validate our efforts by actually paying us for it.  Usually we are sorely disappointed.  Not only do we not get paid, we get rejected – over and over.  You have to have a thick skin to be a writer, an artist.  You have to be willing to keep on going, to continue to expose your feelings and your point of view to criticism.

But what’s the payoff for a writer, we wonder.  Even if you sell a story, the check you get isn’t likely to cover your house payment or even buy a week’s groceries.  You might not get money at all, just the glory of being published plus five copies of the issue your story appears in – bragging rights.  If you hit the jackpot and get a book deal, maybe you can live off the proceeds for a year.  Or maybe not, especially after mounting and financing your own publicity campaign.  Why work so hard for so little?

Back at the art festival, a man stands for a long time looking at the photographic images of twisted rocks in rainbow colors you don’t usually see in the desert.  He turns to the artist and says he’s so moved by the images.  Another person, a woman this time, goes through the prints in the bin.  She pulls up one after another, studies them, then puts them back.  When she’s gone through both bins and turns around, she has tears streaming down her face.  She thanks the artist for such beautiful work.  She doesn’t buy anything, but the reward she and the man before her have given the artist is worth more to him than money.

Conventional wisdom aside, the very best compliment an artist can have comes when his work touches someone.  It’s the same for writers.  We love it when people find a little bit of themselves in our writing.  We hope our words make them cry or laugh or feel like they aren’t the only ones who ever had that experience.  We hope our readers feel an intimate connection with our characters, but at the same time feel like part of something bigger than themselves.  If art does that, whatever the medium, it’s worth the effort, even if the compensation is only a tear or a thank you.  The artist has communicated his point of view, and another person has seen it and embraced it.  An invaluable human connection has been made that enriches both artist and audience.

That’s why we should bother.