On certain days when I sit to paint, I end up getting nowhere. I brush colours over discordant colours, and no combinations of strokes satisfy my intention. Eventually, the mottled canvas is discarded, despite the hours of work it contains.
But that's OK, because a fresh canvas will be cut, and the work can begin anew tomorrow, this time with clearer designs.
Writing is sometimes a similar experience. Content, like cake, can be lost beneath layers of pink frosting; sweet enough to cause migraines. Readers, clutching their temples, can be forced to flick pages. Oh, but it all takes so jolly long to arise that the author wields the knife with crinkled nose and screwed up eyes ... dreading the cuts required to make it a digestible slice of work.
Distressingly often, I'll re-examine my own writing's icing to discover, whoops, I've totally forgotten to include substance! Toss it out. Begin again. Who cares?
Frivolously discarding half-finished works wouldn't be an option, however, if creativity was a career rather than just a pastime. Professional pressures would surely shift the emphasis from the artistic process on to the final products.
For one's profession and livelihood to depend upon not only skill, but also original thought, day after day ... how hard would that be?
Unfortunately, inspiration supply disregards demand, and lack of it in writing circles is considered a seriously debilitating, career-halting condition. A family acquaintance of ours has suffered from "writing block" for several years now. His wife (bless her) has nothing but sympathy for his incurable illness.
This element of risk qualifies concern for capricious individuals who dare to venture down paths of creative careers.
Ideas - art's vital ingredients - seem to belong to the sacred whim of muses.
Unlike talent which can be refined, or techniques which can be practised, ideas are flimsy, unpredictable things.
Where do they come from?
Perhaps they're helpfully delivered to open minds by divine spirits from unknown sources.
More commonly, they manifest atop breezes, come and go with sneezes, and certainly don't abide by deadlines! "You can't rush art!" Is a favourite excuse for pushing schedules, but (here's a secret) it just isn't true; when the work piles up, often there's no alternative but to hurry.
Widespread Western depictions of creativity and desperation, of art and suffering, are enough to encourage most students towards steadier pursuits. As a "pure" arts student, social stigma can make me feel I'm studying a side dish.
Would you like an LLB with that?
It may surprise the geology department (which recently voiced the benighted presentiment that all students of English should line up now for government hand-outs) that most arts graduates have more sensible plans than the stereotypical plunge into an artistic abyss.
If you'll forgive the extended baking metaphor (I'm on holiday, I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen lately), arts degrees are the cupcakes of tertiary qualifications: Fundamentally, they're a straightforward recipe, and they don't require a lot of cooking time.
However, the versatility of cupcakes is such that they allow for every occasion.
The success of a batch of cupcakes doesn't depend on sourcing complicated ingredients, or on supervising the oven for an entire day ... instead, a baker's manipulation and interpretation of the classic cupcake is what sets it apart from the banana loaves and the rocky road (pun intended, geology).
• Katie Kenny studies English at the University of Otago.
