Epiphany: making creativity work financially.

Obviously I completely abandoned this blog long ago, but I’ve decided it’s time to start over with weekly updates. I’ve moved beyond being a struggling “writer” to being a writer/director/producer, and even “CEO” of a new entertainment company. (Mind you, all it costs is about $500 to start up a company and call yourself CEO, so let’s not take that as any sign of success – the “struggling” title still holds! For now, anyway... )

The reason I’ve decided to resurrect this blog, is that I’ve found a new purpose for it. This year has been one where I’ve had to confront the issue of why I continue the creative struggle when there is so little reward in it. How I had been living was unsustainable – working long hours and giving up sleep attempting to meet both creative needs and financial responsibilities, and feeling like a failure on both counts. This has meant a lot of soul searching, looking down new pathways, trying to find a solution. And I now have some great ideas that may be just that.

This blog is going to catalogue my attempts to move beyond the “struggling” point by putting these techniques and ideas into action. If you are a struggling writer (or struggling creative artist in any form), I hope you can join me on the journey, putting the same principles into practice for yourself, or making your own suggestions, so that we can all rise above bittersweet “gift” of creativity to earn a healthy balanced living from our talents.


In a nutshell, if you want to live a life of creativity, you also have to learn how to be a better business person. I know that you’re not at all interested in anything as boring as “business”: money doesn’t motivate you, and you want to concentrate on what you are good at. However, one of the reasons why creative people always struggle, is that we hand the business side over to business people, who then go on to profit from our creativity more than we do.

Without money from your art, you have to take another job to pay your bills, which in turn wears you out, gives you less time for your creativity, takes toll on your personal life, happiness and sanity, and will sooner or later break you.

Non-creative people won’t understand this dilemma. They’ll tell you to stop being “indulgent”, just quit your art and get a real job that pays your bills like everyone else does. They don’t understand that your art is the thing that grounds you, gives you meaning and purpose in life, and that you need this in your life the way most people crave love. Sometimes you are willing to sacrifice everything else for your art. Other times you are plagued by doubt, and guilt, burdened by your life responsibilities: you view your creativity as a curse, an addiction that you wish you could rid yourself of.

In this blog we are going to examine achievable ways to achieve this, by taking matters into our own hands. Join me next week as we explore the first technique.