The Lemon Life | online magazine offering a fresh perspective on post-grad life.

Words by: Mark Hunter

Image by: sacks08

In the year 365 million BC, some thrill-seeking tetrapods (teenagers, probably) got drunk and proceeded to do exactly what their parents, and conventional wisdom, had explicitly forbidden them to do; they stole a car and joy-rode around the neighbourhood until they eventually lost control, flew out of the ocean and beached the vehicle, thus propagating life on dry land.  In 2007 AD, I too made an alcohol based and potentially suicidal decision; I swapped full time work for a writing career.  Like these drunken tetrapods, I too experienced much initial fear, confusion, very little food and a hangover.  Things aren’t a whole lot better now, but I have at least adapted to my environment – evolved, if you’ll pardon the elongated analogy, to life in this strange new world.

There are, I’m sure, plenty out there who harbour dreams of snapping the pencil in two, shutting the computer down without first clicking ‘start’ and leaping full steam into the murky world of the arts. To this end I have compiled a short survival guide – a helping hand for those as mentally deranged as me who might be on the verge of doing just that.  If it doesn’t put you off, good luck!  I’ll see you in the Job Centre.

Talent:  Pop Idol, X-Factor, America’s Got Talent…the list of worldwide freak shows is almost endless.  And the bonds that hold them together are the freaks themselves – those whose parents and friends have massaged their baseless egos up to stratospheric levels.  Don’t become one of them.  Get objective opinions from contemporaries or those in the know before you decide how good you are.  Delusion, as you’ve probably seen, always ends in tears.

Attitude to money:  If you want to get rich, stay where you are; in 2008, British authors earned on average 33% less than the national average wage, while American artists overall were 26% similarly worse off in 2006.  Working in the arts changes your view of money – its sporadic appearance ensures that it is only used on luxuries like rent, bills and food.  If you enjoy and want to continue to enjoy a lavish lifestyle, your odds are better served outside the creative sphere – unless you have a talking animal to hand.

Thick skin:  Eleanor Roosevelt said: “Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You’ll be criticized anyway.”  She wasn’t wrong.  More often than not, the more compassionate and caring a person you are the more likely you are to take strong criticism to heart rather than extracting the constructive feedback and ignoring the rest.  It is possible to learn, of course, but not without that kernel of unbreakable self-belief to work from.  Self doubt, like fear of failure, has to be either ignored or quickly overcome.

Hard Work:  It took me some time to realise that I couldn’t call myself a writer when I didn’t have a completed work with at least some genuine literary merit under my belt.  University Of Life, my debut novel, was a hell of a slog but it made me realise that talent needs hard work and visa versa.  Completing one novel taught me more about the writing process than three years of creative writing classes.  Get something done, experience the highs and the lows, and ask yourself if you would be happy doing that for a living.

Luck:  Whilst you may not be able to engineer your own luck you can certainly give it a helping hand; an agent, for example, can spot your work at just the right time only if you send it in.  An EMI manager can only wander accidentally into your gig if you get yourself one.  Get your work polished and get it out there.  You never know who’s looking.

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