Saturday, April 25, 2009

What Kind of Writer Are You?

In his terrific restaurant memoir, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain describes several types of cooks:

You’ve got your Artists: the annoying, high-maintenance minority. [...] so ethereal and perfect that delusions of grandeur are tolerated.
Then there are the Exiles: people who just can’t make it in any other business, could never survive a nine-to-five job, wear a tie or blend in with civilized society -- and their comrades, the Refugees, [...] for whom cooking is preferable [to other work].
Finally, there are the Mercenaries: people who do it for cash and do it well. Cooks who, though they have little love or natural proclivity for cuisine, do it at a high level because they are paid well to do it -- and because they are professionals.
I see, in those descriptions, several types of writers. The literary Artists whose originality and perfection stop my breath and force me to endure beats of despair until I accept that such will never be me. The Exiles (whom I don't understand) and the Refugees (whom I'm currently aligned with, although reconsidering). But overall, being a practical person at heart (with an enormous love of literature) and good at execution, I am, I suppose, a Mercenary.

Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman -- not an artist. There’s nothing wrong with that [...] Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying. And I’ll generally take a stand-up mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day. When I hear “artist,” I think of someone who doesn’t think it necessary to show up [...]. More often than not artists’ efforts [...] are geared more [to themselves...] than satisfying the great majority of dinner customers.
What kind of writer are you?

3 comments:

  1. I'd rather be a Mercenary but so far I've gotten by becoming an Artist. Becoming and being are two different things and no competence should be inferred in the case of becoming. I can afford to become an Artist than be a Mercenary because I have another job to pay the bills. It gives me the luxury of practicing writing rather than selling it. The smart ones are the Mercenaries. Because with experience, comes art.

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  2. I participated in an overnight short-story contest this weekend, and woke up this morning wanting to get back to my story unspoiled by much exposure to "real life." But I did stop by here and read your comment ... and honestly, it was a terrific send-off to finishing my story.

    Thanks for playing :)

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  3. I love Anthony Bourdain! And I do "get" the exiles- people who are just miserable in the confines of a corporate/office environment, and have to find places to make a living where they can have at least some sort of sense of movement and freedom; where they don't have to put on a shirt and tie and sit like a school boy for 8 hours.

    I am like that, and I think lots of other ex-theatre types are that way, too. Hence the temp jobs, and lack of long-term employment history for me! Now I've got the excuse of stay-at-home motherhood to save me from the next admin assistant job... at least for a while! :)

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