One friend, Lizzie Newell is a writer. She explores a world with its own sexual and environmental situations. But in addition to the pure writing there is the whole editing and marketing process.
She is blessed with the talent to design book covers for herself and a few others, but the effort she takes to understand self publishing, because her stories do not fit into a neatly defined mass market box that publishers push on unsuspecting readers is amazing. There are places for independent sellers and small scale publishers to get their product made and on the shelves, but it takes a lot of hustle.
Other friends have opened businesses as the outlet for their creative endeavors. Happily Carol at the Screaming Weasel in North Pole has recruited other artists (including me) to sustain and diversify her inventory.
I have also seen the efforts of other artists who network continually to get shows and their name out to galleries and businesses to hang their work for first Friday art walks or in pop up shops. or marketing through Facebook groups, Etsy, Ebay, Craig's list, and their own websites.
I find myself wondering if I would ever really have the energy and drive it takes to follow any similar paths. Because as many hours as they spend marketing their work they still find time to create new works for the public to enjoy and desire and buy.
And more than anything I would need the confidence in what I produce to market at the intensity that I would need to to make it pay me.
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