What is art?

Slogging my way through "New Art City" by Jed Perl, a book about the modern art movement in NYC.

What I love about it are the constant questions of:

What is art?

Who is an artist?

What is success?

It's clear that most of these artists struggled for years with no guarantee of success.  In fact, most of them thought they were going nowhere.  Some broke through on talent, some on self-promotion, some by luck, some by just hanging in the art scene long enough to get noticed.

The question of "commercial" art comes up again and again.  (Much like in the music industry you hear about "selling out.")  It was a small world and most of their notoriety came from others in their circle and much of that came from their personalities, and who they hung out with, and so on.  That the outside world would ever take notice of them seemed remote.

I've noticed in writing that some writers pay a whole lot of attention to trends and what might sell.  Others pay no attention at all.

I'm somewhat paying attention but I don't let it change what I do unless I'm already inclined to do so.  I tend to think my tastes are more or less commercial in the sense that I'm simply trying to tell a story and that the kind of story I like is likely to be the kind of story that other people like me would like and since I'm pretty centrist in my tastes, that's what I write. Like, you know what I mean?

So for instance, just the realization that "series" of books are more likely to catch on than single books was enough to get me to change.  But I'm not really selling out, since I have no problem with doing it.  In fact, now that I've started, I kind of like it.

That doesn't preclude the one-ups.  Led to the Slaughter is probably a one-up.  (Though the main character certainly could go on being a Monster Hunter based on the last chapter.)

So that was an easy concession to make to commercialism because I like the idea of a Trilogy or a series anyway.

I write the stories that come to me.  I decided not to try to pick and choose which ones to write but write the story that appeals to me the most at the time, whether I think it fits any grand plan or whether it's commercial or not.  Writing is the thing.

Linda's comment about my books is "Thank god they aren't filled with Teenage Angst.  I'm so sick of Teenage Angst."  Which is an interesting comment in that she must think my books are young adult and I keep getting people to say that and when I look back on my early books I see them as directed at teenagers even thought I didn't think I was doing that at the time.

But I wouldn't know how to write teenage angst if a teenager angst-ed all over me.   I write what I write and if it's commercial then great, if not ...well, not much I can do about it.  Hard enough to write without being able to write what I want.

The idea of "Pure" art is interesting.  That is, it doesn't matter if you are obscure as long as you are producing art.  OK.  But how does anyone know?

I'm inclined to keep writing, no matter what, and hold out faith that some people will eventually find what I wrote.