Beautiful Corpus
A young person recently asked me what they should write to make money.
“Checks,” I said.
Then I had to explain what a checkbook was. About halfway through the history lesson, I could tell I had lost them. So I offered a more contemporary answer: Due to market forces well beyond our control—everything from artificial intelligence to declining literacy, with even The New York Times leaning into vertical video—they needn’t worry too much about making money as a writer.
Problem solved.
And yet, opportunity appears to be everywhere. Say the right thing, the right way, on the social-media platform du jour, and you stand a chance of going viral, attracting an agent and scoring a book deal.
But that’s a lottery, not a career plan. We may all have access to the same tools and algorithmic mojo, but access is not agency. There are two sides to every gate: the gatekeepers and the gatecrashers. I think we know which side we are on.
You want to be a writer? Write.
It is that simple, though not necessarily easy. It helps to develop the skills peculiar to the vocation: observation, solitude, curiosity, nerve, resilience and the ability to continue working when no one appears to care. A creative life is ultimately a lifestyle choice, and like any walk on the wild/mild side, it can be as fraught as it is rewarding.
Of course, it would be wonderful to become a successful practitioner of one’s medium, a cause célèbre or, ideally, both. I bet. Develop enough gravitas and eventually the mere mention of your name may confer a little esteem by proxy upon whoever drops it. Your work expands into books, appearances, adaptations and ancillary products. You become, basically, an economy unto yourself—in short, an institution.
But that is not the point. It is merely one possible result.
The point may not even be the work itself. It is the identity, and the particular lens that identity gives you: a way to see the world differently and, conversely, to be seen differently by the world. Sometimes in a spotlight. Sometimes by the dim candle in the Parisian garret of your mind.
Call yourself a writer. Call yourself an artist. Call yourself Ishmael. But choose something, then inhabit it fully.
Live long, die fast and leave a beautiful corpus.