Can we talk about work ?

I tried to make a living from my creative work alone. I was a number of years out of undergraduate school, had held a few jobs in galleries and non-profits. I was freelancing a lot on the side. I got a really big freelance gig as my first marriage fell apart and, with a ton of help from my friends, tried to relaunch my life in a new apartment in a terrible part of town (where, twenty years later, one can now buy expensive coffees and craft cocktails, and all things 'vintage').

I failed miserably. I worried endlessly about the next gig - to the point where it made me overshoot deadlines so I had at least something to work on. I racked up enormous debt. It seemed that no matter what, I could not patch together enough stable income for one reasonably healthy man in in his early 30s to live responsibly (that is, without being a leech). The idea of starting a family was utterly out of the question.

I didn't come from that kind of childhood. My father was a company man at IBM who had miraculously survived the downsizing of the late 80s and eventually retired after a life-long career. My mother, a nurse, worked in hospitals and doctors' offices except for a brief stint at a department store when we lived in New York. I don't know that they ever 'did what they wanted', but they did what they felt they needed to do to take care of us.

A life in the arts, if it was discussed at all, was - from an early age - equated with poverty and a certain amount of selfishness in my family. "What are you going to do to support your addiction?", my father once asked, in all seriousness, when we used to share a commute that took me to a community college art school and him to his office. Pursuing art was a pathological endeavor, one that was going to drain resources, not provide them, and one that was about what an individual wanted, not what needed to be done. My parents worked hard - I knew that - but they worked for large (and largely benevolent) entities. If they didn't worried where money would come from when they finished this or that project, they never told us.

This is not the life of the artist, the writer, or - in the era of mass adjunct higher education - even the college or university professor. This may be why I was so interested to see Chris Offut's story in the February 5, 2015, NY Times Magazine, My Dad, the Pornographer. Offut's story may have prurient appeal, but it's the mechanics of it that interest me. Offut describes his father's twin motivations for writing porn: what was out there was so poorly written and he needed to pay for his kids' orthodonture.

The article goes on to describe the way Andrew Offut (writing under various pseudonyms) was able to produce a book a month:

Dad’s writing process was simple — he’d get an idea, brainstorm a few notes, then write the first chapter. Next he’d develop an outline from one to 10 pages. He followed the outline carefully, relying on it to dictate the narrative. He composed his first drafts longhand, wearing rubber thimbles on finger and thumb. Writing with a felt-tip pen, he produced 20 to 40 pages in a sitting. Upon completion of a full draft, he transcribed the material to his typewriter, revising as he went. Most writers get more words per page as they go from longhand to a typed manuscript, but not Dad. His handwriting was small, and he used ampersands and abbreviations. His first drafts were often the same length as the final ones.

Manuscripts of science fiction and fantasy received multiple revisions, but he had to work much faster on porn. After a longhand first chapter, he typed the rest swiftly, made editorial changes and passed that draft to my mother. She retyped it for final submission. At times, Mom would be typing the beginning of the book while Dad was still writing the end.

His goal was a minimum of a book a month. To achieve that, he refined his methods further, inventing a way that enabled him to maintain a supply of raw material with a minimum of effort. He created batches in advance — phrases, sentences, descriptions and entire scenes on hundreds of pages organized in three-ring binders. Tabbed index dividers separated the sections into topics.

Eighty percent of the notebooks described sexual aspects of women. The longest section focused on their bosoms. Another binder listed descriptions of individual actions, separated by labeling tabs that included: Mouth. Tongue. Face. Legs. Kiss. The heading of Orgasm had subdivisions of Before, During and After. The thickest notebook was designed strictly for B.D.S.M. novels with a list of 150 synonyms for “pain.” Sections included Spanking, Whipping, Degradation, Predegradation, Distress, Screams, Restraints and Tortures. These were further subdivided into specific categories followed by brief descriptions of each.

Dad was like Henry Ford applying principles of assembly-line production with pre-made parts. The methodical technique proved highly efficient. Surrounded by his tabulated notebooks, he could quickly find the appropriate section and transcribe lines directly into his manuscript. Afterward, he blacked them out to prevent plagiarizing himself. Ford hired a team of workers to manufacture a Model-T in hours. Working alone, Dad could write a book in three days.

Now that is how you answer the question, "How are you going to support your addiction?", which is really a person who loves you but has no idea what you do asking, How are you going to support yourself and your family as a creative artist?"

When I was in college, my parents withdrew their support for my art studies and I had to drop out for a time. I was rescued from a lifetime of working in record stores when the chair of the art department, Stuart Baron, arranged for a full-tuition scholarship that allowed me to finish school. I am eternally in his debt, but I remember the anxiety I had at the time that I might lose that chance, and how I worked as hard as I could to earn its continuation. I am eternally in Professor Baron's debt, but I think what I began learning from the experience was how to make art into a central focus of my life - a career - not a distraction or addiction.

I have to admit, I still grapple with what my employer - a Research 1 university - generously calls my 'creative work and research'. I am extremely grateful for the privilege I enjoy that allows me to pursue my work. I work on some pretty esoteric things. And people I meet still think it's somehow not really work. But when I read about a man who figures out how to write pulp pornography to pay for his son's braces, I think I know what love is.