Working it out

Just back in from deliverig a workshop, this time for a group of Home Educated children up at a museum in Bradford; it’s part of a larger series of workshops I’ve been doing for them

I was struck by a phrase someone said to me the other day “selling your creativity”, that survival as a freelancer relies on you “selling your creativity”, that might be true but, as long as there is still time for your own practise, I don’t see this as a bad thing.

Some poets want the nine to five, some poets want a job that they can switch off from when they get home and become writers in the evenings and one weekends. For me, working freelance and always being involved in the poetry and literary world means that I am constantly thinking, constantly writing, constantly engaging with new ideas; it keeps my enthusiasm high and my creativity bubbling.

What do you think? Should writers “sell their creativity” should it be about workshops and the like or should we be bohemians, surviving on nothing and suffering for our art or should we, like some of our greatest poets, have more ordinary jobs?