The unmoored, uncertain life of the artist

The uncertainty and unpredictability in the life of the writer and artist is universal and perennial. Kurt Vonnegut wrote:

"In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me."

Comparison and self-doubt are the thief of creativity

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that "comparison is the thief of joy." Comparison is also the thief of production and creativity. It is deadly and antithetical to the artist, the creator and the creative process. Philip Larkin said to the Paris Review:

"Everyone envies everyone else."

He also wrote a poem, 'On Being Twenty-Six':

"I feared these present years, 
The middle twenties, 
When deftness disappears, 
And each event is 
Freighted with a source-encrusting doubt, 
And turned to drought."

Quentin Blake said: "As soon as I knew something was intended for print, I tightened up."

Hitchens wrote, embrace the doubt and comparison:

"The main thing as I keep saying, I never tire of saying is, to keep testing yourself against other writers who are better than you. That’s what qualifies one as a writer I think, permanently running the risk of having to say I don’t know why I bother."

He elaborated on this:

"[With George Orwell] you don’t get the sense for example when you’re reading Proust or Nebokhov or George Eliot that you shouldn’t be in the writing business."

Art is theft, Ctd Jack Vettriano

The self-taught Scottish painter Jack Vettriano was asked by Terri Eaton of the Artists and Illistrators magazine of November 2013, 'how did you learn to paint?' He said:

"I copied the techniques of lots of artists to see how they managed to get the paint down."

Asked what the best advice ever given to him he said: "The art critic W Gordon Smith advised me not to be sidelined by other people's opinions and to follow my own ideas." Asked for his inspiration he said: "Caravaggio for creating atmosphere and Francis Bacon for his imagination - though I'm probably intrigued by his lifestyle more than his work."