Selling Your Art Is Selling Out, Right?

Creativity,inspiration, whatever you call what’s inside you that channels yourideas and turns them into art, has the reputation of being acapricious, mercurial partner. If you aren’t nice it will desertyou when you need it the most. And the worst offense an artist cancommit is to corrupt the muse by making money off it. The secondmoney enters the room, your creativity flees.

Or not.

A long time ago at a writer’s conference I heard the most helpful tip ever, and it’s true for any creative business.

There are three people in every artistic business: the artist, the critic and the business manager.

Never, ever let more than one of them in the room at a time.

You can picture why.

Too many people trying to make decisions can cause problems

Theartist would stand over the business manager arguing about how toprice a work. The critic would nag the artist at every brush stroke.The business manager would badger the critic, telling him to ‘GetOn With It, Already,’ so the work can be put up for sale.

Each one gives theother two constipation.

This is even more important (and difficult) if you’re doing all three jobs yourself. When writing, just write. When editing, just edit. In the writing biz, instructors tell you to “kill your babies.” You can imagine how the writer feels when the editor lifts the knife to do the deed. And when business-ing, just do that.

Making sure you choose the best time to focus on creativity

Whileyou’re at it, set aside your most awake and energized time for yourartistry. The other tasks can be done when you’ve served your muse.Your muse doesn’t care about money. What it does care about, justlike a precocious child, is routine, plus lots of quality time andattention.

Your muse justwants to channel stuff for you to bring into the world. Truthfully,you’re the one who cares about money, or maybe I should say theparts of you that equate selling your art with selling out or theopposite, that selling your art means you’re worthy—those partscare about money.

Create away, and don’t burden your inner artist with business.

Next, work through money issues

When you run into money roadblocks, make friends with them. You can work with the parts of yourself that fear selling AND not selling your art, or are afraid of being visible, by doing Active Imagination with each part. I’ve suggested some questions.

Questions to Get Acquainted With Your “Roadblocks”

1. Tell me about yourself.
2. What do you protect me from?
3. Why do I need protection?
4. How can I help you?
5. What would make you feel safe?
6. How can I bring you into my life?
7. Is there anything else you want me to know?

Here’s an example of me making friends with the part of me that’s afraid that my books WILL sell:

C: Hi. Can I talk tothe part of me that’s afraid of a lot of people buying my books?

P: Sure.

C: Tell me aboutyourself.

P: You know me. I’mthe part of you that keeps the scary stuff hidden. You try reallyhard when you write these books; I don’t want you to feel bad if abunch of people buy them and think they suck. What if you didn’tfind all the typos? What if you said something wrong—the books willlive on for decades with a mistake in all of them. It would betotally humiliating. What if someone famous came out and said yourbooks were stupid or badly written or just a waste of paper? Youcouldn’t bear that.

C: What do youprotect me from?

P: Humiliation. Ifyou felt too humiliated, you’d never write anything again, and Iknow you don’t want to do that. Basically I protect you fromcriticism so you can keep writing.

C: Wow. I neverthought about that. Why do I need protection?

P: Duh. You’repractically risking your life putting your stuff into the world.People are super-mean, especially when they don’t like something orthey’re jealous. Especially when they’re jealous. You’d gettorn to shreds like you did a few times in high school.

C: How can I helpyou?

P: Don’t show yourbooks to anyone.

C: But I want tohelp people with them. What would make you feel safe?

P: Well, you can doa crappy job with your marketing. You did that before. But I know youfeel bad about doing that, especially when you’re telling otherpeople how to market.

P: I guess I couldstart feeling safer if you never looked at any reviews of anything.Don’t look at anyone’s reviews of your stuff, even on IG. I’mafraid they’ll hurt your feelings too much and you’ll give up.

C: Okay. That makessense. I barely read the reviews anyway now. How can I bring you intomy life?

P: My main goal isto keep you writing. So you could do a couple things: don’t look atany reviews, like I said, and keep writing every day. That’s what Ireally want you to do.

C: Wow—so you wantme to keep writing? That’s a big surprise. I want that too. Isthere anything else you want me to know?

P: Follow your ownadvice!! Make time in the early morning to write every day. You don’teven know how much you have to say. I’ve been trying to get you towrite more. I’ll get out of your way with you selling your books ifyou’d just write every day.

C: Dang. Okay. Iwill. Thank you.

This Parts Work always surprises me. Every part I’ve worked with has something it does to block me, but for a deeper purpose than I can see unless I start the process of making friends.

The part I talked to above, that doesn’t want my books to sell, actually wants to protect me from criticism (by blocking me from selling books), so I’ll keep writing. Who knew??

All parts of us serve us. If you’re curious, you can use these questions to find out what your roadblocks are protecting you from. In the meantime, give your artist a routine and a place to create every day.

Keep the other two business partners out of the room.

You’ll amaze yourself.