> ... art and creativity generally belong, or should be understood as belonging, to what anthropologists call the “gift economy,” an ethos that lies in plainer view in places like the South Pacific islands than in midtown Manhattan. Creativity, he says, proceeds from two gifts: the gift of talent and the gift of tradition, which informs and guides individual talent. And the act of creativity is itself a gift, which can’t be aimed at making money but must be freely given.
#UBI for writer and devs

> #NormanMailer defined a pro as someone who can work on a bad day... The motto.. would be the timeless wisdom of Dr. Johnson: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” A pro makes deadlines, and a pro makes compromises, too. A pro lives in real time in the real world and secretly relishes the constraints of the job. A pro’s greatest boast might be #AJLiebling’s: “I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.”

> .. The deepest pleasure of a piece of writing may lie in a graceful narrative turn, an intuition about human behavior that finds exact expression, the spirit of generosity that lies behind the work. A good word for these things, when they occur, is “art.” Whatever art any book achieves may or may not be rewarded in the marketplace, but art isn’t generally achieved with the market in mind...
#Writing #ArtOfWriting