If one thing alone is certain, it will never be easy to be a writer or any other kind of artist.
Since we live in the age of data, let me describe what in the tech community is known as the 1-9-90 rule.
It states that one percent of the population will post to the Internet, nine percent will comment on that post, and 90 percent will just read it.
Not much different from the old days, eh? Still a broadcast model of communication.
As a writer who has struggled financially at some points in my life, I've always kind of hoped my kids would choose more practical careers, like engineering, medicine, or business administration.
Inevitably, however, most of them have migrated over to the creative pursuits in one form or another. With none of them is this more clearly the case than with my youngest. At 14, she has been pursuing her passion as a visual artist for years now, and today marked a milestone in her journey.
Tomorrow is the deadline for applications at San Francisco's School of the Arts (SoTA). That meant, in her case, she had to submit some forms and recommendations from her art teachers, but also a portfolio of ten original drawings, including still lifes, self portraits, and landscapes.
Despite being told that the odds are stacked against her being admitted (because so many kids want to go to SoTA), Julia has been working hard for weeks to finish her pictures by this deadline.
Last night, she might have been able to finish her landscape, but the fog rolled in over this city and she could no longer see Twin Peaks.
This morning, the sun replaced that fog, and she stayed home to finish the piece.
By mid-afternoon, when I picked her up from school, her portfolio, tucked into a large blue case, was ready to be judged.
But who will judge her work and what do they know about my daughter and her talent?
At the age of 14, what can we really say about anybody?
I can tell you this. She is determined and committed and she works as hard as anyone I have ever known to get things right. She is a perfectionist.
She sees the world through her own eyes, and has little use for perspectives at odds with her own. Although kind and generous by nature, she does not suffer fools gladly.
The way she views things has always struck me as visual as opposed to verbal. She is also a very good writer, BTW, but we writers often fall in love with our own words, and the verbal narratives they imply.
Julia, I believe, falls more in love with a visual kind of story telling.
I don't know what will happen when the school officials evaluate my daughter's application. I don't know that she will be granted the next step in the process -- an audition, where she will have to quickly execute similar drawings to those she's submitted.
But I do know this much. She is an artist in her father's eyes.
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