Retelling the Myth of the Starving Artist
Myths, fairy tales, and classics are popular fodder for contemporary literature. Retelling a familiar but outdated story with a modern twist can not only be entertaining, it can make that story feel fresh and relevant again. No wonder we love reading and writing retellings. Everything old becomes new.
But what about the stories we tell ourselves in the backs of our minds about being a writer? Just as literature can seem limiting and outdated through a contemporary lens, we also carry stories in our collective consciousness that limit writers (and pretty much all creatives for that matter).
Take the Myth of the Starving Artist, for instance.
As with most things, the idea that artists were impoverished or starving surely became a thing because it was (mostly) the truth. Even in the 21st century, there is no denying it’s still challenging to make a living solely from art. But it’s not like starving is a prerequisite for making art and calling yourself an artist. A quick peek online indicates that there are actually a lot of artists getting paid to do art. There’s no doubt that a lot of artists are working a Day Job and creating as a side hustle or hobby, but the fact is that plenty of them have found a way to thrive in a world where creativity is often considered a curse.
The Myth of the Starving Artist provides an example of how scarcity consciousness (also called scarcity mentality) is perpetuated in the collective consciousness. Scarcity consciousness is marked by an underlying belief system that says resources are scarce, whether they are or not. This set of beliefs is usually formed early in life due to real or perceived scarcity of resources. If you had parents who had a scarcity mentality, you might have learned that from them. In addition, even if your family had plenty of resources, you might have picked up a scarcity mentality because you were a creative and The Myth of the Starving Artist was flashing in the back of your parents’ minds like a giant caution light (from their programming) all the time they were raising you. (Please don’t blame them. They were doing the best they could, just like you are now.)
Here are some signs that scarcity mentality is active in YOUR consciousness:
Some small part of you believes that being an artist/writer is a life sentence to poverty.
You hid your writing while you were in school training for your Day Job and never even thought to take a Creative Writing class as an elective.
You love writing in your spare time, and you secretly dream of publishing, but you just know you could never make any money at it, so you never bother trying at all.
You tell yourself that creativity comes last, after work and family with the leftovers of your time.
You are a writing professional and you chronically give away or undercharge for your services while criticizing other writing professionals for charging what their clients are willing to pay for their services.
You refuse to pay for (budget for or plan for) things that would enrich your creative life.
You are terrified of indulging your creativity because it’s too costly.
You’ve put off writing your book or following creative impulses out of a literal fear of starving to death. (Yes. People do that. Sadly, I have done that.)
You react out of a fear that there aren’t enough book deals to go around.
You react out of a fear that there aren’t enough readers to go around.
You constantly worry that someone else is going to steal your idea, make more money than you, get ahead of you in their writing career.
Be straight with yourself. How many of these sounded familiar? This isn’t judgement time. I’ve had more than half of these and seen the other half in friends I adore. My family was a very poor and creative bunch. It was very important to me that I didn’t become a writer. Yet here I am, a writing professional, still writing, still planning to publish a book in the traditional market. Still showing up and surprisingly not starving. Not even a little bit. Sure, I’m married, and my husband has supported my choice to start a business, but before that, I worked at a Day Job just like lots of other people and made time for my writing because it was important to me.
Scarcity mentality isn’t your fault. But it is your responsibility if you want to stop living by it and unintentionally projecting it on others. Awareness is the first step.
What’s so bad about Scarcity Mentality?
Scarcity thoughts are invasive. They’re joy killers. And because they’re mired in feelings of fear and shame and helplessness, we tend to hide them from others, which keeps us from dealing with them. The more we entertain these thoughts in ourselves, the more we double down in them and project them onto other writers and young creatives that we come in contact with, assuring that they continue our self-fulfilling prophecy. As long as we keep projecting this Myth of the Starving Artist into the collective, artists are going to grow up scared and ashamed of their creativity and sabotaging themselves just as we once did.
Maybe you’re wondering what we can do.
Actually, we can do a lot.
We’re storytellers, and this is our community myth, our disempowerment story that we need to retell in a way that’s relevant to the world we actually live in and to the world that we are now speaking into being.
This is very much an inside job. It starts on the level of the individual and ripples out quite naturally from there. We get in this trap of thinking we need to make big waves to affect change. And yes, sometimes that’s necessary. But being empowered and standing in your light is doing something HUGE for the collective. The more empowered individuals become, awakening and sharing empowerment with others who are also ready right now, the more empowered the entire collective is.
The retelling starts by reflecting on our own experience with the Myth of the Starving Artist. This is a great journaling exercise. What did you learn about being a creative early in your life? What did your parents say about art and artists? Did you learn scarcity or did you learn abundance in relation to art? Were you encouraged to practice art for fun but steered away from careers in art? How did those beliefs affect you throughout your life?
What would it have meant to you to have adults in your life believe not just in YOU, but in the value of creativity? What choices might you have made differently? Dig into your writing story, but don’t get caught up in yesterday. We still have NOW. What choices can you make differently now?
After we know where our disempowered scarcity mentality comes from, we can then move on with retraining and affirming ourselves in that empowered abundance mentality that lots of creatives already have:
We trust in the likelihood of success rather than certainty of failure.
If we know we need a Day Job to pay the bills while we make art, we choose from a place of power rather than a place of resignation. If we don’t love the job, we focus on what it does for us and how it makes us feel to take the pressure off of an uncertain writing income.
We schedule our writing time as a priority to our health and well-being as creatives.
We invest in our creativity, and we choose that investment wisely.
We know the value of our services and we charge what we’re worth. We give from the heart only when it makes sense to do so. We pay others what they’re worth.
We recognize the difference between irrational fears and rational fears. We don’t entertain the irrational. We handle our rational fears responsibly, without judging or shaming ourselves. There is no shame in quitting our job to freelance, or quitting freelancing and going back to a Day Job™. Whatever helps you write without fear is good for you as a writer.
We indulge the Muse whenever possible, but we trust that inspiration is truly limitless. (So if we miss the Muse, it’s okay. She’ll be back.)
We trust that there are always more book deals, more readers, more ideas, more money, more opportunities to be had.
I’m not gonna lie. When you first start looking at these statements, there tends to be resistance because the old beliefs are so ingrained. We’ve spent a lifetime gathering evidence that they’re true. So at first, all you need to do is notice when you have a scarcity thought. If you immediately reach for the opposing abundance thought, you’ll think how ridiculous that is when you have evidence right in front of you that you lack. But don’t worry about lying to yourself. That’s not what this is about. One thing that helped me was looking for evidence that the new story could possibly be true. Just notice when you see a writer with a mentality of abundance around art. Read background stories of successful artists and rather than writing off their success as luck, consider that it might have been something else. If it’s possible for them, it’s possible for you.
The more we tell The Tale of the Abundant Artist, the more familiar it will feel to us and the more our lives will start showing that. And the more familiar our new retelling feels, the more the collective consciousness will begin to pick it up, remember and repeat it instead of the old version.
This is a REALLY big topic, and I’ve only just scratched the surface. If this resonated with you and you want to learn more, make sure you SUBSCRIBE to the blog right below this post and please pass it along. We’re all connected in this collective and never know who you might be helping with a simple share.
Much love to you,
Celeste