Someone once suggested that the main route to a happy life is to decide what you enjoy doing best and persuade someone to pay you to do it.
Writers are good at the first part. Not that writing is pure unsullied joy; a wise and witty man called Keith Waterhouse once described writing a novel as akin to digging a small quarry with a teaspoon. But I never met a writer who’d disagree that if you’re really a writer, not writing simply isn’t an option. But persuading someone to pay you to do it is another kettle of herring altogether.
If you’ll forgive me, I’m going to be old-fashioned again for a moment. If you’re going to write (or publish, or for that matter paint, sculpt, perform or play music) as a way of keeping a roof over your head and paying the associated bills, it seems to me that the right way to do it is to write, publish, paint, sculpt, perform or play something that people actually want. This may involve a certain amount of compromise, but hey, that’s real life. And if what you want to do doesn’t pay, there’s always the day job option.
After last week’s much-trumpeted government spending review here in the UK, there came a whole lot of debate and dispute about whether or not they’d got it right. They hadn’t, of course; governments never do, and armchair pundits would always have made a better job of it. But taken all round, arts organisation don’t seem to be coming off too badly – which is something of a surprise, since arts funding isn’t the biggest of vote-catchers, tainted as it is by accusations of subsidy for 'elitist' - not my word - interests like opera and Shakespeare.
Leaving that aside (last thing I want is a whole gang of opera-lovers coming after me with an axe), it got me thinking about the whole business of funding and subsidies for arts organisations. (Though I’m not sure business is quite the right word; surely business implies covering its own costs, and maybe even – shock horror – making a profit.) Sure, a lot of them would cease to exist without the funding and subsidies, and maybe that wouldn’t be altogether a good thing; but I’m never quite sure what makes one organisation more deserving than another.
As a small indie publisher I often gazed with wonder, and not a little envy, at little news items which waxed indignant when another small indie publisher’s Arts Council funding was cut. Oh to have funding that could be cut, I’d think. Once or twice I even thought about applying for some, but faltered when I realised how much time and effort I’d need to expend on jumping through all the hoops and coming up with a proposal that might meet all the criteria – and all with no guarantee of success, because what I was publishing was – shock horror again – commercial!* Heaven forfend that the government might give someone some cash for trying to produce books someone might actually want to buy!
Take that a stage further: what happens if a small indie publisher starts to do exactly that? Maybe not entirely by cynical design. There’s always a large element of luck involved in success of any kind; I don’t think many people would deny that catching the right eye at the right moment plays a significant part. But what if, for instance, they make it on to several award shortlists, and the books actually start to sell as a result? At what point should the funding be withdrawn, and given to someone who needs it in order to progress towards that happy state?
The debate could run and run. And for the moment, so could government funding for the arts. Which, taken all round, is probably a good thing. But maybe it does need some thought.
* Commercial and lucrative are not synonymous. That’s why, having given up the indie publishing lark, I’m still scratching a freelance living, not lying on a beach in the Bahamas.
