You hear so much yapping about a career in writing and art being a hard life. Shoveling coal for a living is a hard life, but when you are doing what you were put on earth to do with your life–and that is to write or paint–your life is simple, for then you have answered the most crucial questions of all: “What shall I be? “What shall I do? Then you ask, “How do I do it” and that is your craft, that is your art.
My blog is intended for writers and artists. Three million Americans identify themselves as writers. 2.7 million Americans identify themselves as artists. Of course, the blog also reaches millions of people in foreign countries who also identify themselves as artists and writers. To date my blog has been looked at by four hundred thousand writers and artists, the majority Americans, and others from even the least populated mountain and island kingdoms.
An Example of What Happens to Writers as Their Lives Unfold: The Opportunities that Appear
I will use myself as an example of a writer whose career over many years I can describe. It may be of value to writers and artists to compare to their own careers. Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life is my best and my favorite book. It was written to help people. The main beneficiaries of Fighting To Win are discouraged people—broke, out of work, disappointed with their career or life, etc. Fighting to Win lifts them up.
Many people–probably most– struggle to find direction for their lives, but some people know from their earliest years the life, the career, they will pursue. I began writing professionally at eight–$25 for a story published in Jack & Jill. I didn’t know then that eventually in my career as writer I would, as many writers do, evolve into writer/poet/book marketer/public speaker/blogger. I decided on the way home from school on a rainy day that my goal when I grew up would be to be a writer so I could write beautiful words like “lovely,” “sea-faring,” and “proficient.” That goal has never changed through the publications of twelve books that are not self-published.
Ninety percent of a writer’s talent is inborn. That’s why writers needn’t attend the Iowa school of writing, but are generally self-taught. Some writers who write surprisingly well when they are very young are prodigies. There are artist prodigies too that draw and paint beautifully like much older artists. They master perspective when they seem too young to have mastered it .Mozart was a music prodigy, composing at four. Baryshnikov was a prodigy in ballet. He was the greatest dancer of his era because he could leap highest.
An early blooming prodigy can perform something before being taught to do it. For example, a young writing prodigy can write a story that has a plot, characterization, themes, tension, mystery, a strong conclusion though they have not been taught those features. The remaining ten percent of a writer’s expertise is skill and technique that comes from study, a ten percent separating great from good, and a phase that introduces the need for hard work, even among the most naturally-gifted.
As in every field, sweat-and-toil hard workers out-perform lazy or listless workers. You cannot rely on natural talent alone to bring high success. Without drive and intelligence–however naturally talented you are–you will not go as far as you could. Each day writers and artists should hope they have talent and tell themselves. “Today I will be energetic. Today I will be focused.”
A career in the arts is in keeping with my Welsh heritage. The Welsh entertain each other with stories and songs. I completed three degrees in American literature and taught Self Development in a university graduate school. At age twenty I had a short story published in a major literary journal. At twenty-one, a highly-regarded writing teacher said of my paper, “Teachers wait their entire career for a student who can write like this.”
I knew nothing about publishing and sent the entire manuscript of Fighting to Win to a publisher who called me and said they wanted to publish the book. I asked what kind of changes they wanted made and they said, “None. The book is a perfect book.” That statement soured me. Surely no book in first draft form is that good. I wanted a more demanding publisher who would encourage me to write my best. I turned the offer down. Having some doubts about the book I wrote an entirely new draft, starting from scratch, consuming a year.
I made an agreement with an excellent literary agent. I owe him a debt of gratitude. He was energetic and honest, and placed my book Fighting to Win with Doubleday. After the success of Fighting to Win, another publisher said they wanted me to write a book for them. “What do you want me to write about?” I asked. They said, “Whatever you want.” So I wrote Waging Business Warfare for Scribner’s publisher, a book that The Wall Street Journal said would change the way companies do business. Both books climbed the best sealer charts. Fighting to Win was also a best seller in Sweden. Waging Business Warfare in France and Japan.
Writer or artist, you have to distinguish yourself from the crowd. You have to get known. I’ve had many appearances in the national media on publicity tours and on my own. The books and my name became known in North America and foreign countries who purchased rights. I discovered that I am a good interviewee for marketing books, which is really sales. I have trained people in selling technique. The goal of a writer marketing to the broadcast media is to be invited back. Ideal is when the host of the show says “Call whenever you have something you want to talk about. We’ll put you on right away.”
Having written a book that becomes known by the public changes the author’s life forever. If you’re an author you’d better like the book since you and it from the publication date to the end of your life will be inseparable. You will be known as “So and so, the he author of….”
A New York publisher, I didn’t know, head of a major house who “had read everything,” generously called me out of the blue to tell me she had read Fighting to Win and found it “One of the two or three best books of any type–prose, poetry, biography, history, arts etc.–I have ever read.”
Then I took on a new career: public speaking in auditoriums in North America and Europe to audiences of thousands about their self-improvement, based on the content of Fighting to Win. I discovered a talent for public speaking to large audiences that I wasn’t aware of. Long ago I was afraid of public speaking, but now I enjoy it as much as I do writing, and the income is impressive. Many speakers/writers earn more money from speaking than from writing. The writer who can also speak is lucky. It is quite a shock to writers accustomed to working alone to find themselves on a stage addressing three, four, five thousand people who have come to hear an author’s wisdom.
Later I began this blog, designed to stimulate thinking about the important roles of writers and artists, especially those who hope to excel, a goal I share, placing emphasis on research and prescriptive how-to advice. I wanted to think of every aspect of writers’ and artists’ work life and write something practical to aid them. Each blog is an essay pertaining to the life of writers or artists–their necessary knowledge, their moods, their challenges, their discouragements, and so on. My most popular post is “The Characteristics of Creative People.” There are now 141 essays.
A major change in this writer’s life was turning, later in life, from writing prose to writing poetry. Since then there has been a stream of publications of poems and great joy. I wrote a book of poetry about adventures I had at seventeen when for six months I lived the life of a hobo hitching rides on freight trains: The Poetry of Riding Freight Trains Across America.
Philip Roth said eventually people won’t read novels anymore because with such busy lives, growing busier, they don’t have the many hours needed to read a novel. A poem can be read in a few minutes.
In Bliss
When you spend thousands of hours working hard over many years as many writers and artists have, and think of your craft all the time since childhood, writing and painting and other arts are the simplest tasks of your time here on earth. Dancers find a similar joy in dancing, actors in acting. When unhindered, such craftsmen write, paint, act, and dance in bliss.
© 2025 David J. Rogers
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Psychologists classify people in categories according to their personality traits. Yet they cannot measure 
I was excited waking up at 3:00 A.M. yesterday, and I was not thinking of going back to sleep. I wanted to finish some poems where I had left off the night before. I thought, “Let my wife–a calmer, less excitable person–sleep; I 
Intense writers and artists do everything intensely–experiencing, feeling, thinking, and imagining. They are significantly different human beings from other writers and artists (and agents and family members and co-workers) who are not intense. They feel their emotions strongly. They soar high with elevated emotions, and they plunge into dark 
Intensity is a quality found in many creative people that facilitates artistic pursuits. Abbe Dimnet said that the creator’s intensity will be reflected in the quality of the work: “The experience of most artists is that the quality of their production is in keeping with the intensity of their wish.” Henry James wrote: “It is art that makes life, makes intensity, makes importance.” Horace said, “Painters and poets alike have always had license to dare anything.” It is their intensity that gives them strength. Keats said, “The excellency of every art is its intensity “ A problem every writer and artist faces is maintaining in every phase of their story or painting the intensity that keeps it going and energizes the creator’s every gesture and the work’s every detail. They must be able to generate and sustain intensity as they work.
Who could be more intense than poet Walt Whitman who expressed a wish to have “one hour of madness and joy,” “to feed the remainder of life with one hour of fullness and freedom,” “To have the feeling today or any day I am sufficient as I am.” Who more intense than novelists Charles Dickens with his phenomenal storehouse of drive that enabled him to work on a multiplicity of books, speeches, plays, travels, and social projects at the same time without ever tiring?
Monet was the most renowned and most influential pioneer of Impressionism–the giant of Impressionism. Painting out of doors, Monet devoted his life to creating new ways of capturing light’s changeable qualities on canvas. A 12:00 p.m. sunlight is not the same as a 4:00 p.m. sunlight, or even a 12:05 sunlight or 12:10 sunlight. Early evening sunlight is similar to but, different from morning sunlight. The suns of one month are different from the suns of every other month. Such facts filled Monet’s thoughts.
Monet became obsessed with the sculptured shape of haystacks and with the dramatic contrasts of light and shade inherent in their form. The haystack paintings were a great success and led Monet to a more elaborate analysis of the effects of light on objects.
Monet gradually transformed his art from painting spontaneous approximations of the effects of light and atmosphere to an art of abstract surfaces existing for themselves. The focus of his art became the surface of pools and areas where the balance of water, light, air and the delicate substance of blossoms co-mingled, echoed each other, crossed on another’s boundaries, and blended together so that there was no difference between them. His last works were a series of large decorative panels in which the forms of nature are difficult to distinguish.
If the water lilies are thought of as real-life water lilies they become a great disorderly mass of arbitrary color. But if the water lilies are considered abstract arrangements of color applied in careful strokes they coalesce meaningfully.
Writers and artists throughout history have feared and hated rejections of their work.
Each rejection compounds the effects of the previous rejections and can lead writers and artists from heights of blissful optimism to the total disappearance of confidence. Yet without 
respond when editors reject their work, and there it was, the questions “What is winning? Is winning the only thing that matters? Is getting published the only thing that matters? Is that the only credential that makes you a significant literary person?”
I remember once learning that a publishing house I was interested in submitting to typically received 5,000 unsolicited manuscripts a year. Less than seventy would be published. What about those thousands of disappointed writers? I’m sure they had worked very hard and had high hopes. But their hopes would be shattered. Are they to conceive of themselves as failures? Are they supposed to give up hope of ever being successful?
You are winning and not failing when you are persistent in spite of setbacks, are able to recover quickly, and are resilient.
You are winning and not failing when you are 
Those are the ways you are really winning even during those times when it feels like you are not.
Whether you find creative people in remote little mountain kingdoms accessible only by mule or in big, modern, cosmopolitan cities, you will discover that they are surprisingly alike. The many traits they share are not all favorable; some are obstacles. Yet those traits–the worst and the best together–prepare creative people for fascinating lives other people look at with admiration and envy.
May be “overlooked” as school children. Their talents unrecognized, they may have undistinguished elementary and high school careers, only to be recognized for their significant achievements later in life to the surprise of everyone.
Sadly, at times may be too emotionally ill to work, particularly poets and writers who may be victims of the high and inexplicable incidence of debilitating 
Have an insatiable need to 
“Know who they are.” Are marked by a clear, unambiguous sense of identity, as “I am an historical novelist specializing in women’s roles in England during the Victorian era.”
Can be playful, child-like, humorous, silly, fun to be with, and seem younger than their age.
Benefit from a rare a
For survival must become skilled at overcoming obstacles, of which there are many in the arts.
painter. The storm buffeting the windows and pelting them with hail and snow made impossible even the thought of digging cars out and driving home. But everyone was in a good mood, and the house was warm. We were happy being together again after being separated so long by COVID.
accomplished people in the arts have wondered what they have that makes their creative work possible. The main quality anyone must possess if they are trying to be successful in anything, not just the arts, but certainly the arts, I feel, is energy. 
“Painters, writers, actors, and dancers enter the world talented. From the beginning of their lives they can draw better than other children or write more interesting compositions, act out scenes more skillfully, dance more gracefully. Just look at the lovely paintings some little children can paint and the poems they can write. Some children are too young to have learned to paint, yet they paint wonderfully and have technique. No one has taught them. They can paint superbly before being taught. When they are being taught they absorb information so quickly, it’s astonishing. That’s the definition of talent.
“I think that 
The storm still didn’t look so good, so they stayed the night. In the morning Paul insisted on making breakfast. I made coffee. We vowed to get together again soon. Then in early afternoon a bright sun came out, the winds died, and they left for home where work and many challenges were waiting.
have finished a painting that in your judgment is excellent in every respect. Like Ariel you are trained and educated in your craft and recognize your paintings’ consistently high quality and dazzling originality. You know you can’t do better. You feel that no one but you could have executed this project. It required blending many abilities not every painter possesses. You see in your painting, as Ariel saw in hers, something especially flamboyant and fetching. Your hopes for its artistic and financial success are high.
your book. She recognizes its significant sales potential. She calls you In Chicago from New York and says that your book is one of the two or three best books of any type she has ever read. She is entranced with the book and pledges to you to commit to “putting it over” whatever resources are necessary to make it the country’s top best seller (The book is topical and has that kind of potential.) You call your agent and ask him about the publisher reputation and he tells you that they are known for selecting one of their titles each year and making it the kind of best seller the publisher described.
resilient means first of all accepting such adversities and those you have experienced yourself as an unavoidable part of the writer’s and artist’s life. That insight deeply-felt and never forgotten is essential for maintaining a firm, unshakeable spirit.
period the body-builder rests, those muscles are rebuilt, but bigger and stronger than they had been. Don’t be so afraid of hardships, stresses, difficulties, and crises. They strengthen you emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.
working, as confident as van Gogh and became one of the most popular American writers of his era. Ernest Hemingway said that at the beginning of his career every day “the rejected manuscripts would come through the slot in the door…I’d sit at that old wooden table and read one of those cold slips that had been attached to a story I had loved and worked on very hard and believed in, and I couldn’t help crying.” But he had faith that eventually his work would be in demand and never stopped working. The crowning achievement was the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Vincent van Gogh spent a short, intense five-year career producing an astonishing three thousand masterpieces that are now auctioned for many millions of dollars, but in his lifetime sold only one painting, and that was for a few brushes and paints. But he continued working confidently and never doubted that in the future his talents would be recognized
In every era, in creative after creative, three empowering qualities like three ingredients of a potent formula have proven to help writers and artists not to give up when they fail. Those qualities are being resilient, being persistent, and having faith in yourself. Resilient, persistent writers and artists with strong faith in themselves never give up.
Faith in yourself touches every facet of your being–whether you think about your prospects positively or in a self-defeating way, how strongly you motivate yourself, your susceptibility to self-doubt and discouragement, and the positive changes you will be able to make in your life.
successful. Catherine Cox studied greatness and disagreed. She found that persistence is a key. Persistence is so important in almost every endeavor that it compensates for lesser intelligence. Cox concluded: “High but not the highest intelligence, combined with the greatest degree of persistence will achieve greater eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence. “
I think of the famous Michael Jordan “flu game” when he had to be carried off the floor after the game with the flu by a teammate, yet scored 38 points and led the Bulls to victory. “Probably the most difficult thing I have ever done,” said Jordan.
would prefer to be cheerful and happy, but as far as creative work is concerned, how you feel is secondary. What matters most are the requirements of the craft you have committed yourself to, and one requirement is day after day to put out effort to achieve your creative goals. It seems to me that one constant goal that is shared by most people in the arts is to develop your in-born talents to the fullest and that another requirement is to 
corresponded about. Nurturing depression in and out of psychiatric hospitals, some of them committed suicide including John Berryman and Randall Jarrell. Poets Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton were friends and felt the same. They talked to each other often, and also committed suicide.
Whatever has been said about the relationship between creatives’ state of mind and their performance, writers and painters I know or have read or heard about have found writing or painting the most fulfilling and blissful thing they do.
had the same view of the function of writers and artists. Ruskin: “The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing and feeling creature.”
Painter Edouard Manet thought the urge to create is a simple reflex that doesn’t require thought: “There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you’ve got it, you’ve got it. When you haven’t, you begin again.”
Creatives have complex memories from which their art derives: “The essential factor of development of expertise is the accumulation of increasingly complex patterns in memory” (Andreas Lehmann).
Since the earliest civilizations people have been theorizing about creatives among them and the creative process. The first question was: is creative ability a gift from the gods?
The best writing resists critical explanation: “In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is because there is a mystery in all great writing and the mystery does not dissect out” (Ernest Hemingway).
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