[caption id="attachment_269" align="alignleft" width="193"] That book cover is art. You may be shocked to learn it wasn't the first thing the artist (Tom Brown) ever drew.[/caption]

By Nimue Brown

Swap ‘painting’ for ‘books’ and many of the things people say about books and writing suddenly start to look a bit absurd. Writing as an art form or as a professional craft takes as much skill as any other art form you might care to think about. Most of us can wriggle our bums around but there’s no cultural habit of telling everyone they should be professional dancers. Here are ten examples of what happens when you swap books for art...

2. Everyone has a painting in them.
   
3. I’ve never done a drawing before, but I’m working on my first painting right now and looking for someone to buy it.
   
4. I’ve never been to an art class, but this triptych I’m doing is bound to be really good.
   
5. I had a really good idea for a picture once. Perhaps you’d like to hear about it? And then you could draw it.
   
6. You artists all make a lot of money doing this, don’t you?
   
7. You’re an artist. Would you mind looking at my picture to see if I can sell it to any of your regular customers?
   
8. I’ve done my painting, I’ve hung it in a room, surely that’s enough? Why would I need to go out and promote it? People will be naturally attracted by its brilliance.
   
9. I don’t bother with going to art galleries and am totally confident that this picture I’ve done with some fruit and flowers sat on a table is like nothing anyone has ever seen before.
   
10. I’m an artist, I don’t need to know any kind of rules or techniques, I need to express myself as a free spirit. What do you mean, it looks a bit like a helicopter? It’s an elephant...
    
11. If you put down 2000 drops of paint in a day, you can get a whole gallery collection together in a month. Ok, so it won’t be very good and I’ll need to redo most of it afterwards, but I think painting as many pictures in a month as I can will be really good for me.

I’ve made myself decidedly unpopular with a few people over the whole book in a month malarkey. I’ve been called snobbish, elitist and had it suggested I just want to keep other authors out for suggesting that not everyone’s first attempt at a novel will be a thing of worth and beauty. As it happens I’m very much in favour of as many people as possible having a go at writing books. I believe in creativity as an important part of life, but I also believe it helps to have realistic expectations, and that writing is more than slapping down 50,000 words as fast as you can. If you’re going to do a thing, there’s much to be said for doing it well. Our first steps are not usually our best walking. Our first sketches are not usually the best art we are capable of making. Learning to write the way you write, and learning to do well all the things you want to be able to do in a book, takes time and practice. It’s not magically different from any other art form. If you were going to dance in ballet point shoes, you’d expect to practice before getting out on your first stage.

 

If you like this sort of irreverence and would enjoy more opportunities to watch me taking the piss, do have a look at Intelligent Designing for Amateurs. Which, obviously, I wrote in a period of three weeks having never seen a book before in my life.

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