Creative Writing as a professional career: 24.2.6>41 (long read)

[lingstijn]

Dear all,

I have recently asked a question and wanted to share it with you, in the hopes you could shed your light on it.

Background and context: I have always been unhappy in any job I worked in for the last 15 years. I tried different things from facility manager to taichi teacher, from archivist to gardener. I am 40 years old now and after a sudden breakdown and quite some time working on my issues (it turned out to be an existential trauma where my sense of self was almost completely destroyed. The quintessence of an existential trauma is living a life that is not in any part belonging to yourself), it is clear to me what I fiercely want: My dream is writing fulltime as a career. Books and writing have been present in my life since I was 4 years old. While some publishers and editors recognized my talent in the past, I was too scared and insecure to publish anything. I am scared to fully go for it, because it takes me a lot of time to write well and I need to be certain I can provide for my two children.

Question: Can I succeed as a professional writer of books (fiction, poetry, non-fiction) in such a way I can provide for my family?

Answer: 24.2.6>41

My own feelings and thoughts: (The way I read I learned from Harmen Mesker.)

The lower trigram is Thunder. For me it represents the power I feel inside me, it is the leap I want to take, a sudden turnaround of my life. I associate it with powerful lightning, as a symbol of my true inner self.

The upper trigram is Earth. For me it stands for the willingness to take care of my family, and also the concrete manifestation of the lightning flash, my writing that produces concrete results. It tells me also that I need to nurture my writing or else it will only remain a sudden flash with no longterm results.

In ancient China, lightning was thought to burst up from the earth to the heaven above. Hexagram 24 as a picture lets me see a lightning flash that bursts up through the earth and returns to heaven, so the connection is made from Earth to Human to Heaven, returning to my natural place connected to Earth and Heaven. Hexagram 24 is called Fu, returning or also a turning point. This tells me that I finally return to my authentic self where writing is engrained in my soul. Also it points to the changes I want to make in my life and that I am standing at a turning point.

Two lines are changing, the 2nd and the 6th. And these I find very difficult to interpret, I feel confused about both of them. Here is what I make of them:

The 2nd line tells me I should stand for my decision to write fulltime and make it known to the world. That there is nothing to worry about, but that I should take it easy and slowly and not rush into it abandoning everything.

The 6th line tells me that if I do not go for it (not returning) that I will be very unhappy inside myself and outside myself. I should not miss the opportunity now of ‘returning to myself’.

So, I guess the I Ching tells me that the most important is that I live authentically from within. Because I want to write, I will write and because I want to provide for my children, I will provide for them. And that the possibility firmly exists that these two can come together.


Well, thanks for taking the time to read through it all! I look forward to hearing your thoughts, comments and insights. Thank you in advance!


Kind greetings.

 

[bologna_tendra]

It seems to me there are two different things here. You specifically ask if you can succeed as a published writer in such a way as to provide for your family. I may be wrong, and others may correct me, but 24.6 seems to me a warning not to do this. It reads in part "if armies are set marching in this way, one will in the end suffer a great defeat . . . it will not be possible to attack again". Is there a chance you may deplete economic resources to such an extent in the effort that you lose the chance to try again.

For context hexagram 41 is called decrease. Wilhelm speaks of it as not in all circumstances meaning something bad; he says scanty resources may bring an inner truth (this is true). However you have not asked if writing will help you reveal an inner truth - you have asked if it will enable you to be materially successful (support a family)- and crucially this a different criteria. The reading to my eyes does not appear to be fortuitous in the context of financially providing for a family.

You write "I need to be certain I can provide for my two children". I don't think this reading gives that certainty. If you have not already had success (e.g. awards an/or a publishing contract) then if working on writing full-time you be presumably be required to live without a source of income, unless you have other investments that can provide a guaranteed income for a time while you write. This is risky, and if a family is dependent on you, you are not only risking yourself.

You write that you feel you are "living a life that is not in any part belonging to yourself" and that you haven't enjoyed any of your jobs. You might want to ask I Ching about this - for example ask why you feel dissociated from your work - it may give you an insight that leads to some feeling liberation in your work.

Thomas Pynchon worked a steady job at Boeing and wrote V while working; he only resigned his job once V was published and had won awards. Anton Chekhov worked as a doctor and only gave up his work when he was fully established as a writer with a good income from it. Perhaps this is a good approach - work and earmark a two-hour window to write each day, or a one-hour window if you can't spare two hours. If you write fiction you may begin with some short stories, or even flash fictions, with their limit of 1,000 words will lend itself to this. Also, it will help you with practice of writing discipline and economy of language, something of use in writing longer works such as novels.