Painters vs Authors

Ah, to be a painter!

I hold artists who paint or draw (let’s call them ‘painters’) in very high regard. I often wish that I was a painter rather than an author.

At the risk of offending the painters amongst you - I think being a painter is simpler than being an author.

I don’t mean that painting a great work of art is easy by any measure. I do mean I think it is easier than writing a great work of literature. This is what the painter’s grass looks like to me from my side of the fence.

I will explain.

It seems to me those lucky painters can see something of the world about them and with great skill (for sure, acquired over many years and many hours of effort) create a piece of art within an afternoon, or a day. Perhaps the most detailed amongst them will take a few months. At each pause during the creation, they have only to take one or two steps back to review their progress. And, when they do, they can see all of it – that is they can see the whole picture right there in front of them, visible in all its brilliance and its weaknesses. To hone in on the things that need improving takes a matter of seconds to identify, albeit that the decision about how to resolve such areas may take more time to deliberate over.

Once they are satisfied they have finished the piece it is immediately present, it already exists. It needs no further production for it to be possible for others to see it – it is apparent upon its canvas (although I accept that to gain a place in a gallery is no easy feat). When the viewing public see the work of art, it is an easy thing for them to partake of its beauty – they simply stand and look and consider. For the vast majority of us, this consideration of art is an instinctive act. We either immediately like it or we do not. Yes, there are art critics and art connoisseurs who will turn this instinct into convoluted conversations about intent, style, taste as well as the innate talent and technique of the artist. But on the whole, the general art buying public experiences a quick, heartfelt reaction, one that often denies explanation and in any case isn’t generally expected of an art buyer (‘What did you think of that painting?’ is not a question generally asked of an art purchaser).

For some painters, selling an original piece of art represents a well-deserved three or four figure sum – more for the rock-star artists of course - for the one piece, with rights retained to sell prints in volume thereafter. It is possible therefore for the artistic creation of a single piece to net a good return in a single transaction.

So, there it is, my admittedly narrow and single-sided viewpoint of a painter’s lot in life!

I shall now treat you to a comparison with what it is like to be an author; to be me!

It takes me approximately a year to take an idea I have for a story and craft it into a finished product; a book. I have no chance of crafting a book from first typed word to on the shop shelf in anything less than this. Twelve months minimum then from beginning to end – certainly not a week or a day, or an afternoon for those virtuosos of paint.

In order to review my creation, I have no option but to read the thing, and this process is not a matter of merely pausing and considering. It takes hours to read the books I write (yes, I could write shorter stories to ‘help’ myself here – but you get my point). After these revising hours, there are the inevitable changes to be made, and then further reviews – all of which require similar time periods. It can take me three weeks to perform one full end to end edit of a book, and I have to repeat this process at least three times. Then, once I am satisfied I have polished it to the best of my ability, it is a professional necessity to hand the piece to someone else to review. This third-party-edit and proofread is done for lots of great-craft reasons, not least of which is that it becomes nigh on impossible to judge the merits of the manuscript objectively. As the author, I obviously know the feel of my story, the flow of it, the sense of its place and themes, but I am still standing amongst the trees rather than being able to stand back and view the forest as a whole. In short – it’s not always that easy to spot where the ‘bad brushstrokes’ are (to use a painterly metaphor if I may).

Once I am finally finished – the story is complete, polished and at its shiniest self, edited to grand-efficiency and poignancy of tale – I am still reliant on a number of other people in order to produce the final product. A book cover designer is needed, for instance, in order to make my product visible and attractive; a laser-printed, string bound bundle of A4 pages isn’t going to cut the mustard with the book buying public now, is it?

Now I come to the consumers appreciation of my book.

As it did for me during the process of creation, it will take any reader of my book quite a few hours to consume (probably about eleven if the audiobook conversions are a good indicator of average reading speed). Of course, this hardly ever takes place in one sitting. So, in reality it can take many weeks for someone to read and appreciate my creation. And having done so, there is a societal consensus that to discuss the book, criticise it or otherwise is valid for every reader to enter in to. This is why so many book clubs exist – we love to share our opinions of books. There is also a commonly held viewpoint that we all have a book or a story to tell, leading some readers to have, how shall I put it, an unproven confidence about how much better they would have written my book’s story.

Finally, an author’s income is based on a fairly low price per transaction of the product.

Yes, it’s possible to make oodles of money being an author, but only if you manage to move big numbers of the product. By the time all of the other guys involved in placing your book in the virtual, or otherwise, bookshop window have taken their cut, it’s pennies per book sale that I, the author, receive.

So poor dumb me, yeah? No, not really.

Like I said, I am in awe of painters. I’m only indulging in a bit of green grass gazing over the fence. And I’m only really in the mood to do this when I am on the precipice of the creation of another ‘product’ of mine. My fourth book was begun in January 2021. I finished the first draft in June 2021. I am about to begin the first edit and know that there is a lot more ground to hike through. This journey will involve traversing painful, rutted landscapes which will cause me to stumble and curse and wonder what the hell I am doing.

Hence this, my ode to and admiration for painterly artists and all of the positives that I choose to perceive of their particular world, versus my own.

Perhaps the painters amongst you will hit the reply button and enlighten me with the more prosaic aspects of your creative world. I would be fascinated to know, but, at the same time, slightly disappointed not to have some ‘green grass’ beyond the fence to gaze at and be envious of when I am mired in the trenches of my own authorial back yard!

Rachel x