hack

HACK:  A writer who works on order; also a writer who aims solely for commercial success. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

HACK WRITER is a colloquial, usually pejorative, term used to refer to a writer who is paid to write low-quality…books “to order”… In a fiction-writing context, the term is used to describe writers who are paid to churn out sensational, lower-quality “pulp” fiction such as “true crime” novels or “bodice ripping” erotic paperbacks. (Wikipedia).

I’ve never been called a hack writer—although, as one who’s written what might be called “bodice-rippers”, I suppose I might qualify.  I can almost imagine myself living on Grub Street in London in the 1800s with all the other hack writers, an impoverished bohemian, huddling in a one-room flophouse across the street from a brothel.

But the disdain that seems to accompany the idea of writing for money amazes me sometimes.  It’s not that I’ve done this (yet), and I really try to put my best creative effort in whatever I do.  Ideally, I’d like to have both.
But if an artist/writer DID produce mainly for profit—what of it?  Are the arts supposed to be ABOVE wanting commercial success?  I’ve yet to hear of a used car salesman who was spurned for clearing out the lot, or a plumber who unclogged pipes solely because it was his gift from God.  Why are “creative” people cast in a different light?

Would I write if I didn’t get paid for it?
Yes.  Have done so, probably will do.  It’s a part of me, and of most serious writers, I think.  I’d write, even if it was just for myself.  And I’m not sure it’s necessary to sacrifice “art” for “craft”.

But would I mind being in the company of “hack” authors like Dickens, Chekhov, Fitzgerald and Faulker?
Would you?

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