1) For the money? 2) For the show?
Have been thinking about the role of monetary reward and the place of work which is either not directly, or only minimally, remunerated but that nonetheless may lead to remuneration and may indeed be a precondition.
(This is not about the dubious practice of expecting people to do stuff for free because EXPOSURE.)
Thinking of the academic model of publishing journal articles, reviewing, refereeing, etc, which does not bring in the moolah (does it ever not, even with one's ALCS payments for photocopying etc) but it is, particularly thse days, what has to be done in order to get an academic job - and of course, if you're really lucky, a TV gig that's actually paid.
And this grew out of a gentlemanly model of scholarship, where a) the scholar did not need filthy lucre in return for his endeavours and b) the outcome was circulated to other interested scholars. This led to the setting up of various societies which published journals and other things like edited texts, but essentially for the love of it and to disseminate the debate.
And then these publishing initiatives got swallowed up by Evil Conglomerates which see them as an income stream (no, honestly, I do not see a single 1p of what Evil Conglomerates charge should you wish to download one of my articles).
But the original model was that it was more something that one did as part of the route into a particular profession - I will concede that having committed some work of scholarship a not insignificant number of scholars, having got their Oxbridge college fellowship, spent more time laying down the college port than in the archives or producing, you know, further scholarship.
I also wonder whether there has not been a not dissimilar pathway for the not bestselling or major critical repute novelist, whereby, with the claim of 'being a novelist' under their belt (while the publisher wrote off the advance with a sigh) managed to parlay this into being a literary journalist and reviewer, teacher of creative writing, etc.
However, thinking about this I was also given to wonder about the role of gross commerce on creativity and the number of Great (or at least, enduring) Works that we owe to the fact that the author was obliged to put bread on the table, shoes on the feet, roof over head, etc, rather than indulging their Creative Soul.
Particularly when, if they did ever publish the thing into which they had poured their creative soul, it does not have the staying power of the works they churned out to keep the bailiffs from the door.
(Possibly relevant here is something that somebody told Margery Allingham, which was that if you were writing in a popular genre widely deemed to be hackwork, you could write anything you liked.)
Thought sort of emerging from that utopian notion that in The Future everybody is paid a modest but adequate amount which they can top up with productive work: whether this would lead to more works in which Creative Soul was unburdened, or whether it might actually lead to a greater production of works which might never be major bestsellers but ongoing niche favourites. Or what.
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