In HN debates on the subject, I've noticed a small but persistent core of resentment for professional artists, based around the idea that artists shouldn't be s

In HN debates on the subject, I've noticed a small but persistent core of resentment for professional artists, based around the idea that artists shouldn't be so greedy as to ask for money because being an artist is fun. And while it certainly can be, a lot of the time it's a tedious grind same as any other line of work. I find this analogous to saying software engineers shouldn't be paid because they like playing with computers. Indeed. I think the problem of artist market value isn't supply, but that people have this idea that creating something is somehow 'free,' that creative work involves no actual work and therefore should just magically fall from one's arse. "Fun" doesn't put food on the table. And creative work is incredibly labor intensive, perhaps more so than any other job I've done, from factory labor to line cook. Because it never ends. When my shift was over at a 9-to-5, that was it, but as a creator? It never switches off; you constantly have to be revising, creating, brainstorming, and promoting to have any shot at making it. One of the only guys I knew who was actually making enough off RPGs to call it a living was working 40-60 hours a week on top of a day job in (I think) insurance. Another guy I know who manages to eke by does it by writing sometimes as much as 10k words or more a day for as many as two to three different books at a time plus freelance work (by comparison, Neil Gaiman, best-selling fiction author, recently wrote that he considered 2k to be a very good day). When I was still writing I generally had to make about 2.5k to 3k a day to keep up with any kind of profitable deadline, and all for books that at best were likely to make a few grand in the full life of product. And then everyone wonders why people quit the market ...