I have had many conversations with people in factories where I get materials for my work and with craftsmen. They always like to see photographs. They like to know what I do with the materials and they often get quite excited about it all. They do something quite different with the same materials but they do understand what it is I am doing. The difference is that they do not know why I do what I do but I know why they do what they do. They are capable of doing what I do and so they can understand it when I tell them but they would not do it. That is the difference between a craftsman and an artist. The work of the craftsman is necessary but the work of the creative artist is not. The craftsman does what he has to do or what he is told to do and the creative artist takes full responsibility for all of it but he never has to do it. For a writer

The writer is to serve god or mammon by writing the way it has been written or by writing the way it is being written that is to say the way the writing is writing. That is for writing the difference between serving god and mammon. If you write the way it has already been written the way writing has already been written then you are serving mammon because you are living by something some one has already been earning or has earned. If you write as you are to be writing then you are serving as a writer god because you are not earning anything. If anything is to be earned you will not know what earning is therefore you are serving god. But really there is no choice. Nobody chooses. What you do you do even if you do not yield to a temptation. After all a temptation is not very tempting. So anyway you will earn nothing. (WIEL, LIA 54)

It is the same thing in any art. You do what you do and if it earns money that’s nice but most often it does not and it is better to do your earning doing something quite different so that you never need an audience. An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work. Being necessary is what makes craftsmen and fashion and commercial art. There is nothing wrong with these things only they are not art and it is funny how everyone always mixes them all up and doesn’t want to know the difference between art and the rest. That is why mostly the creative artist never earns much from his art because nobody wants to know the difference.

. . . certainly I said I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich. (EA 128)

The facts of the case are that all these people, including myself, are people with a considerably large endowment, and most of us spent thirty years of our life in being made fun of and laughed at and criticized and having no existence and being without a cent of income. The work needs concentration, and one is often exhausted by it.