People will say that because artists can’t immediately turn their work into capital gain, art is therefore not work, and that what the artist does is not labor. I’ve been thinking a lot about this kind of work—creative work, work that is not seen by the academy (nor by some creative practitioners) as “real,” rigorous labor, labor without which the “real” work of literary criticism would not exist. I often hear, “But this is a PhD—you have to do PhD-level work.” This notion of a “level” is meant to describe an intensity of rigor. When people say this, they are saying that creative work is not rigorous enough to justify the financial support of an academic institution, even though creative work provides the basis for a creative writer working in such an institution in the first place. This work—which ideally results in publication—is our only way to achieve stability as a professor of creative writing upon graduating from the PhD. This is the work we are expected to put aside during the program, or to find time for in between the academic writing required of us. The rigor of PhD work, in short, is an obstacle that prevents us from working on the material that will get us an actual job in our field.

I decided to be candid with my students today about art as work, and about taking that work seriously. I want them to know that they will have to protect their work from the demands of their lives, because most other people won’t take them seriously for dedicating themselves to it.

The artist (unless validated by capital gain) will always have to contend with people trying to convince them to put their creative work aside—as if it’s a hobby in comparison to actual work, which, in my life right now, is the work of the PhD. In the PhD, creative writing is vestibular and secondary to academic writing. Every day I feel angry about this—about having to be “twice as good” in order to prove that I am “rigorous” and “qualified” as a writer, thinker, and educator. The justification for my having to put aside my primary work is that I have to do “serious, PhD-level” work, since I am in a PhD program. This serious, PhD-level work (which is frankly no more rigorous than what one produces at the undergraduate level, though maybe greater in volume) is apparently what will get me a job—not the novel that I will have to wait to work on until I have proven that I can write academic papers (all of which will sit in a folder until I have to pull language from them on the next occasion of having to prove that I am in fact rigorous and understand modal logic and how to conduct research and structure an essay).

I told my students that no institution—even ones that pay them—will protect their time and creative energy. Adjunct and non-tenured faculty know this far better than I do. Academic institutions will try and suck creative energy into “real” work. Even if your creative work earns you a paid position within an institution, you will constantly have to fight against that institution in order to protect your time and energy to continue that creative work. This is a fight I have to negotiate every day as a university employee, doctoral candidate, and writer. I usually feel like I’m losing. There is no single person against which I’m fighting or with whom I have an axe to grind—it’s just the faceless and incontrovertible Way Things Are. I’m not angry at faculty, my peers, or the institution of literary criticism. I’m angry because it is abundantly clear in this context that the artist is not fought for in the way the academic is fought for. The artist is not cared for. The artist is given a burden of proof of their legitimacy that is so heavy it threatens to flatten their capacity to contribute to their community in the way they are best able to do so. If you think the artist does not deserve support to do their work, you should deeply consider the art you consume and enjoy, and consider the circumstances that allowed that art to be made. It did not come out of thin air, nor does it exist because of raw talent and sheer will. It took a lot of work and time and money.

This is all to say that I love artists—especially writers. I fucking love you. I love how resilient you are. I love that your work gives you purpose. I love that you don’t have time for existential crises because there’s work to be done. I love the way you freak out. I love that your work is separate from your job and that your job doesn’t define you because who the fuck cares how you make money. I love that all your best stuff ends up on the page and sometimes there’s nothing left for conversations in real life. I love that you don’t care about seeming ignorant or boring. I love that you live inside your head.

Anyway all I said to my students was to NEVER pay for an advanced degree and that no one is going to help them make time for their work. Honestly not a soul. No praise they receive can translate into actual value. The most important currency is the time and space required to engage with the process of creativity that calls most urgently to the artist—whatever that process looks like and no matter what it produces.