It’s not a good mental atmosphere for creative work. Eventually it reduces the available subject matter to stays at artists’ colonies. It saps your courage, your willingness to stand alone; it induces you to accommodate, to ingratiate, to give over, to play safe. What’s ruled out by this mad double vision is an idea of writing as something worked at steadily and alone over a lifetime, the vehicle for a writer’s deepest concerns as they grow and change — the kind of career that Gissing had a hundred years ago, that gave us “New Grub Street” and a handful of other powerful, forgotten books.
The Struggling Writer: Gissing Had It Right – New York Times
It’s not a good mental atmosphere for creative work. Eventually it reduces the available subject matter to stays at artists’ colonies. It saps your courage, your willingness to stand alone; it induces you to accommodate, to ingratiate, to give over, to play safe. What’s ruled out by this mad double vision is an idea of writing as something worked at steadily and alone over a lifetime, the vehicle for a writer’s deepest concerns as they grow and change — the kind of career that Gissing had a hundred years ago, that gave us “New Grub Street” and a handful of other powerful, forgotten books.
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