"Nature not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write."
-- attributed to A.E. Housman, English poet and scholar 1859-1936
Someone asked me if writing was an art and I said it was, even though at artist workshops the front row is for painters, potters and sculptors. Writers, if they get invited, are over there in the corner because they're wordsmiths who practice a craft. Reviewers who don't like my writing always suggest I should work to "improve my craft," usually in the direction they would write it.
Painters don't get that kind of reaction because there are far fewer people who think they have what it takes to stand at an easel and brush up nature than there are those who think they can write about a sunset.
That art appraisal embraces oil on canvas and dismisses bound words on paper doesn’t mean writing isn’t art. The struggle to create is the same at a keyboard as it is at a potter's wheel. The earthenware vase, however, is more accessible than 200 pages of speculative fiction. Reading isn't easy. Looking at a picture or ceramic pot is.
Except, perhaps, modern cubism, which often strikes me as fancy doodling and hurts my neck to look at. I always think my eyes aren't in the right spot to fully appreciate what the artist saw.
I'm not talking about understanding. A person could spent a lifetime in front of van Gogh's "The Starry Night" and still not achieve comprehension or appreciation. Some people don't like Mark Twain and find J.R.R. Tolkien too wordy.
If you consider social impact, writing is far more influential than what's generally accepted as art. Thomas Jefferson didn't paint the Declaration of Independence.
An editor told me that people don't want to think much when they read for enjoyment. Reading is hard enough without having to think while you do it, he said.
A writer said she wanted to start her book differently, but professionals told her to do otherwise for the hook, for the sale, so that's the way she rewrote it. She wasn't happy with it, except she thought it had a better chance to sell. Wouldn't it be better if she were pleased with her effort? Working hard for the money is okay, but working only for the money produces things like "Shark Week in 3-D."
Van Gogh created an apartment full of paintings no one wanted to look at until he was dead. He sold one before he left this world. I've sold four books, so I'm ahead of van Gogh. And I have both my ears.