The answer, of course, is no. William Carlos Williams was a family doctor. Franz Kafka was an insurance man. James Joyce mooched off his brother and Virginia Woolf was determined to make her writing pay no matter what. From family money to colourful schemes, Mason Currey, author of the acclaimed Daily Rituals, explores the well-worn and unlikely paths forward for the up-and-coming artist . Making Art and Making a Living is an entertaining examination of the collision of creative ambitions with real-world necessities, and of the messy compromises that gifted individuals have patched together to pursue an artistic life.
Mason Currey is the author of the Daily Rituals books – Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (2013) and Daily Rituals: Women at Work (2019) – featuring brief profiles of the day-to-day work habits of more than 300 brilliant minds. He lives in Los Angeles and writes Subtle Maneuvers, a twice-monthly newsletter on the creative process.