Honor Your Art Monster

I assume that by reading this blog, you’ve reached some level of recognition or acceptance that you (yes, you) have an art monster. Maybe it’s still a cute tiny thing, like a baby tiger blind to the world. Or maybe it’s just a quiet voice that you only hear when everything else has stilled.

“Art monster” is a term that appears in Jenny Offill’s novel Department of Speculation to represent sentient beings, usually male, that “only concern themselves with art, never mundane things.” Nabokov was one such example. “Vera licked his stamps for him” is the detail that sticks.

Claire Dederer references this appellation in her essay, What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?, when she extends the line of questioning to explore whether women are allowed or forgiven the same selfishness (or sacrifice or dedication) as men to create their art.

Rebecca Solnit references Dederer’s reference to clarify that “selfishness is not particular to artists,” and that “writing is work that can hold up its head with all the other kinds of useful work out there in the world and it is genuinely work.”

Agreed. Writing is work, hard work, worthwhile work. But Solnit seems to operate under an assumption that all writers get paid in the same way as the other employments she mentions, such as lawyers and nurses and environmental activists.

Most writers I know, including myself, operate on an opposite assumption, which is that we will never get paid for our work. At least not enough to live on. Yet we’ve still got this art monster to feed.

Fun fact #1: Upon birth, baby tigers have roughly four hours to latch onto their mothers, writhing in darkness for a source of food. If they fail to suckle, they starve.

Luckily, the art monster diet is not expensive. At least not for the writer. Give the monster time, attention, and lots of books to devour. Nurture it with fun facts and interesting observations. Get a notebook to keep track of all this work. Once in a while, take it out on the town for a lecture or a reading or some other inspiring venue — the theater, an art gallery, a dimly lit bar. Add in a dash of delusion, and your art monster will do quite well.

But honoring your art monster is difficult. It is, in fact, the most difficult thing I learned to do as a writer. It is also the most important.

You must honor your work because no one else will do this for you. Love the process. It is not an easy one. There will be messy notes and shitty drafts. Love those, too, because they are part of you and they are evidence of your growth.

Give it space. Make room for it. It will grow into whatever capacity you give it. Mary Oliver says, “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

Love the process. It is not an easy one. There will be messy notes and shitty drafts. Love those, too, because they are part of you and they are evidence of your growth.

There will be nights when you are alone with the brutal, berating voice of all that wishes to slay your art monster. There will also be nights when you long for this kind of company, this kind of solitude.

Your art monster may stop speaking to you. These periods are often the worst.

You’ll have to figure out how to make amends. Perhaps you just need some time apart. Don’t worry. Your art monster can’t live without you.

Many can and do live without their art monster, stifling it before it gets a chance to feed. Sometimes, even now, I wonder if it may have been better to bury my monster, repress it before it got a chance to grow into this cantankerous unsatisfied demanding beast with whom I share a life.

An art monster is single-minded in the pursuit of art.

An art monster is willing and able to shut the door to the rest of the world, to resist the call of the Twitter feed, to let the dirty dishes decompose in the sink.

An art monster can be dangerous. They are inherently selfish, monstrously selfish. As Offill and Dederer and Solnit suggest, art monsters can become pathological. Narcissistic. Depressive. Dissociative, if you will.

Last year, my art monster expanded and puffed up through a two-month art residency, when there were no dishes, no emails waiting my reply, no demands of me except to create new work.

Then I had to banish it back into its corner. This was surprisingly painful. Reluctantly adapting to a new full-time job, I came home drained and initiated pointless arguments with my partner, shoving the blame on my art monster. (This, by the way, is both a classy and convenient use of your art monster. There are many other uses.)

Art monsters are greedy. The more you feed them, the more voracious they become. Sometimes, you simply run out of energy to give. Sometimes, you remember that there are others in your life, and they also need care.

Fun fact #2: Only two tiger cubs typically survive in a litter that can be as large as seven.

Many art monsters do not survive. Conditions are hostile.

It’s been months since I’ve felt that I’ve written anything productive, but tonight I wrote this, for you, so that you can believe in your art monster. And also because you help me believe in mine.

As I write this, my friends are drinking at a bar down the street, and my laundry’s been sitting in the dryer for a week. But me and my art monster? We are at peace. For now.