For some time now, I’ve noticed how the nonsense about the importance of hard work, effort, discipline, and obligation, the relentless “sweat of your brow” ethic that dominates the marketplace, has been gaining strength in the literary and creative worlds. What were once the byproducts of inspired and enthusiastic creation, qualities like discipline, constancy, and diligence, have now been elevated to ends in themselves, hollow virtues fetishised by those who fail to grasp the leisurely and free nature of artistic endeavor. The very words that once embodied the essence of artistic liberty (‘inspiration,’ ‘imagination,’ ‘creativity’) now carry the mark of naivety. The age of the spirit has passed —we now live in the era of the accountant. Writers are increasingly inclined to evaluate their practice in spreadsheet terms, making more and more evident that the language of creativity has been colonised by capitalist lingo. It is now common practice to speak of a writer’s oeuvre as their “work”, or, as it is more grimly rendered in Spanish, “trabajo,” a word whose Latin root, tripalium, refers to an instrument of torture. Authors don’t write, they “produce”. Too often, creators measure their worth by the sheer volume of books they’ve published (the familiar phrase “[X] has published more than ten novels” never fails to dishearten, as it reduces artistic output to a commodity, judged by weight), much like painters by the number of exhibitions or musicians by the number of concerts and tours. What was once a free and joyous pursuit —anti-middle-class in spirit— has now been reduced to something scarcely distinguishable from the trivialities of ordinary labour. Perhaps the old rebelliousness and bohemian attitude was always something of a façade, but façades, after all, are revealing. Artists once pretended to exist beyond the boundaries of society, now they boast of their industriousness, as though artistic worth can only be justified through ceaseless effort.

The productivity machine pervades everything, cloaked in the language of empowerment and personal growth. Bullshit prospers. Creative writing courses flourish, not because they cultivate artistry, but because they offer methods, techniques, and systems to enhance efficiency and churn out that coveted little novel each year. Authors, incapable of finding inspiration in the act of creation alone, demand deadlines, as if only the lash of obligation could spur them to their desks, like prisoners asking for chains to keep themselves in motion. Indeed, discussing the writing process as an exercise in suffering and sweat has become entirely acceptable, even praiseworthy: it’s startling to see how Borges, in an interview with William F. Buckley Jr., comes across as the ultimate idealistic literatus dispensing thought-provoking (our epoch’s euphemism for ‘irrelevant’) wisdom when he asserts that the only reason to write is to enjoy the process. In literary magazines, especially those in the English-speaking world, the discourse around creativity fixates obsessively on its laborious aspects. Articles focus on how many hours an author writes, how many words they produce per day, and whether they write in the morning, afternoon, or spend the entire day at it. They shamelessly refer to this as “the creative process”. Every interview follows the same script: Do you write with music or without? Do you turn off your phone while writing? How long does it take you to complete a draft? How many words do you write each day? The audience, of course, delights in such details, reveling in the knowledge that Hemingway was content with 250 words a day, that Graham Greene could churn out 1,250, or that Gabriel García Márquez would finish his writing by two in the afternoon before heading off for drinks with friends. “So there’s no magic after all,” these readers console themselves, “Writers are just like us, and their routines are just as miserable. They actually have a job like everyone else!” Ah, the readers… they pause, momentarily pleased with their own perspicacity, before adding inwardly, “We must de-romanticise artists and demystify creation! We must normalise everything!”

It never ceases to amuse me how vigorously people rush to applaud the assimilation of literary creation, indeed, creation in its broadest sense, into a professional, middle-class pursuit. Not that I would accuse them of being entirely mistaken. Far from it. By all appearances, creation has become yet another in the long litany of mundane occupations: one takes their seat at the desk in the morning, fortified by coffee, prepared for the tedium of staying productive, and begins the ritual of typing, painting, or what have you, while muttering that well-worn mantra of Picasso about inspiration arriving only in the course of one’s labour. And so one submits, with scarcely a protest, to the catalogue of humiliations that have always marked the life of the salaried: the unyielding pressures of productivity, the soulless dominion of “by the sweat of your brow,” the crushing necessity of tedium, the reign of routine, the shameless self-promotion, the transactional networking, the relentless depersonalisation inherent in the so-called job well done, and we nod, with surprising docility, as if all this were not only acceptable, but somehow noble. The irony, as always, is exquisite. For never, at any point in history, has creation been further removed from the actual conditions of middle-class life than it is today: the artist, more than ever, finds it nearly impossible to extract from their art the economic sustenance required for mere subsistence. Most, if they do not turn outright to other, less vocational work, must prostitute their talents —if those talents are in any way marketable— to the menial pursuits of advertising, graphic design, fashion, and the like, salvaging, in whatever meager way possible, some fragile remnant of time with which to pursue the thing they ostensibly love. And yet, even in that precious, fiercely guarded fragment of time, a space one would imagine should be sanctified for the unbounded exercise of imagination, the banalities of middle-class existence impose themselves, seeping in through the cracks of self-imposed pressures, stifling norms, and the soul-deadening routines of ordinary life. The very space that ought to be an escape becomes a mirror of the working world, replete with deadlines, quotas, and that insidious and creeping feeling that one must always do more. Worse still, this labour is not merely unrewarded but rendered hollow by the absence of purpose, devoid of the transcendence one might expect from a creative life. The artist, having traded the aristocratic privilege of artistic autonomy for the middle-class burden of production, finds themselves mired in the same dreary grind… Only now, without even the compensations of salary or security.

I can’t help but think that, at least in the world of literature, we are living in the long hangover of the twentieth century, wandering in the shadow of a time when it was still conceivable, though difficult, for one to sustain oneself as a professional writer or artist. The pseudo-religious and pseudo-capitalist bullshit so fashionable today, with its insistence on the virtues of work in the process of creation, seems intelligible only when viewed through the narrow lens of the last two hundred years, and particularly the last seventy, a brief historical exception, when creatives were granted unprecedented access to economic resources. I remarked earlier that creation has never been less middle-class than it is now, but that statement requires some nuance: the truth is, artistic creation has almost never been middle-class. It’s only with the advent of writers like Balzac, Dickens, and Dostoevsky that we can even begin to speak of literary production as a middle-class enterprise, when authors could, however tenuously, make a living from their artistic output. It is only then that creation begins its unfortunate conflation with work, Balzac himself, with the resigned air of one already consigned to this fate, speaks of “the patience necessary to put one word after another”: it’s the beginning of the encroachment of necessity upon the freedom of art.

By the twentieth century, these dynamics had worsened to a grotesque degree, as the ideology of labour, traditionally confined to the factory and the marketplace, began its inexorable creep into the creative sphere. Where once the artist stood apart, unburdened by the miseries of daily commerce, they now found themselves enmeshed in the prosaic realities of financial calculations, audience expectations, sales figures, media coverage, and publishers’ advances —those very concerns that would have seemed inconceivable, if not vulgar, to the great creators of earlier centuries. Little by little, the distinction between creative process and production, things that should have remained forever separate, began to blur, and before long, they became indistinguishable. The slow invasion of work into what should have been the sacred realm of creation reached its peak by the end of the twentieth century, epitomised by Kurosawa’s chillingly tranquil advice for young artists: “The tedious task of writing has to become second nature to you. If you sit and write quietly all day, you’ll have at least two or three pages, even if it’s been unpleasant. If you keep it up, you can have two hundred pages in no time.” It is difficult to overstate the infinite sadness contained in this seemingly benign statement. How deranged has the world become for such a grotesque notion to pass for wisdom, or worse, for it to be presented as inspiration for young, aspiring creators? What should have been nothing more than a consequence of the creative process (the number of pages, the completed work) has now become the very point of the endeavor, while what ought to have been the true aim, enjoyment, personal satisfaction, self-realisation, has been reduced to a mere possibility, a secondary concern, an afterthought. The world upside down? Welcome to capitalist realism.

But was it not always like this? Before Balzac, before the modern intrusion of work into the sphere of the imagination, did not artists strive and sweat to compose their masterpieces? Surely, one might ask, even in those loftier and more patrician eras, the act of creation required effort and discipline. And yet, as far as I remember, one finds no letters from Petrarch praising the virtues of daily toil at his desk, no treatises from the stoic Montaigne on the importance of labouring over passages he did not feel inclined to write. We do not hear of Goethe detailing to his devoted Eckermann the number of words he put down each day, nor of Byron lamenting the absence of deadlines to spur him into action. And no, I do not believe it is because they possessed some greater “natural talent” or that writing was somehow easier for them, nor because they didn’t exert themselves in their art or dedicated a considerable amount of hours to their writings. It is simply that, even when they earned some (usually modest) sum for their efforts, it never occurred to them to conflate art with work. Of course, they worked hard, but that effort was the inevitable byproduct of passion, not its precondition; striving was a natural consequence of their love for the work, never a prerequisite. It was not discipline that they possessed, but the illusion of discipline, only projected as discipline after the fact, by baser souls incapable of grasping the feverish intensity of a mind possessed by vision. Such vision was born not from obligation but from love. For them, literature was not merely a profession but a way of life, a means by which to expand the boundaries of imagination and thought, and through that expansion, to inspire others to do the same.

Literature in those days was an aristocratic pursuit; not in the vulgar sense of class distinction, but in the deeper sense of its ability to liberate the artist from the yoke of necessity, to allow the writer, through the act of creation, to rise above the sordid imperatives of the everyday world. For figures like Montaigne or Petrarch, writing served as a sanctuary, a space where one might be shielded from the very forces that Kurosawa, like so many others in the twentieth century (one quickly thinks of Hemingway, Philip Roth, M. V. Llosa, Coetzee) would come to advocate as essential to the creative process. Creation was, quite literally, magic, a departure from the ordinary, a rebellion against the dull constraints of the mundane. It offered the artist a rare space of freedom, a moment of transcendence where one could refuse the trite, murderous expectations of society and instead carve out a kingdom of the extraordinary. Only we moderns, with our obsession for normalising the world, could convince ourselves that everything must be brought down to the level of the pedestrian, that the creative process must be stripped of its mystery and remade in the image of the marketplace. The very notion of the professional writer, diligently counting words and calculating schedules, would have been seen as a peasant indignity by the ancients. The idea that one could “make a living” (with all the implications that phrase entails) by writing would have struck them as nothing less than a sacrilegious blending of the sacred with the profane.

Naturally, for artists like Kurosawa, the descent into the profane still carried some justification, as there was, at the very least, the solace of financial compensation. But the days when one could build a career as a writer have long since passed. The story is well known. By the end of the twentieth century, literature began to slip from the central spheres of cultural discourse, retreating little by little, until today it resides, if it can be said to live at all, on the distant margins of what we still quaintly refer to as “culture.” Sales plummet, literary magazines dissolve into irrelevance, and publishers, increasingly indifferent to the art they claim to support, trivialise the works they produce. It has become all but impossible to earn a dignified living as a critic, editor, journalist, or academic —roles that were once the economic lifelines of writers. And it’s no longer just about the finances. The few remaining scraps of money circulating in the industry now demand concessions that would have been unthinkable to previous generations. Yes, artists have always faced the pressures of compromise, but what once seemed a negotiation now feels like a total abandonment of creative principles, an act of survival rather than opportunity. More than ever, to be published, an author must submit to the demands of corporate publishers, increasingly consolidated and driven by marketing executives concerned only with short-term profits, the ephemeral rewards of social media clout, and the favour of an audience steadily debased by the very industry meant to elevate it. It seems, to me at least, that today it is nearly impossible to release a book with any real guarantees, even from a so-called “reputable” publishing house, without first surrendering one’s dignity to the whims of the industry —becoming, as it were, the performing monkey of the literary circus, or else renouncing a good part of one’s artistic integrity.

It has always been a complicated adventure to sustain oneself as a professional writer without the cushion of wealth. But today it has become nearly impossible, and for many, even masochistic. Yet the current situation presents opportunities. Perhaps paradoxically, the loss of economic incentives could restore to literature a dignity lost with the commodification of the profession and offer us a chance to reconsider healthier, more vibrant ways of writing, ways guided less by labour and resistance to “tedium” and more by pleasure, enthusiasm, and spontaneity. Now that writing has become insolvent, we might reclaim the Renaissance ideal of literature as a sanctuary from the world, a practice of personal elevation. We might return to the pleasure of the amateur (from Latin amatorem, «lover”) and mock the lingering remnants of professionalism and expertise that still haunt the literary sphere. We could once again revel in that sense of irresponsibility toward the public, a hallmark of health in all great cultures. We might reconsider our relationship with effort and dedication, welcoming them only as the natural byproducts of enthusiasm and devotion, rather than as burdens imposed from the outset. We could banish the words “work” and “production” back to the vocabulary of the industrialists. Perhaps, we could finally accept that what we cherish most in literature must be protected from the taint of money, and that, in truth, the separation of literature from the marketplace may be nothing but a blessing in disguise. In this, we might create a new and authentic nobility of creation, one that rises above the degrading demands of productivity and restores to art its rightful place, free, unburdened, and sovereign.

However, the reality is less forgiving. In a world where the market’s relentless pressures infiltrate every aspect of our personal and creative lives, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain even the illusion of artistic independence, let alone indifference to power. Dropping out does not seem to be an option. The so-called “non-professional” writers are routinely excluded from the literary conversation; rather than being hailed as paragons of independence or creative integrity, the few brave souls who have renounced the dystopian farce of the publishing market, they are instead dismissed as failures and consigned to marginality for not making the official cut. Drowning in the absence of economic alternatives (and writers are, as we know too well, a proud and hopelessly impractical species, ill-suited for almost anything beyond their craft), most are forced into the cold cynicism of forging a “professional” literary career, as though we were still living in the good old days of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. In this act of reluctant, almost coerced cynicism, they embark on what only mockingly can be called a “literary career,” submitting themselves to the indignities of corporate editors, prostrating before the strictures of clickbait and sensationalism, and having to endure the filter of criticism, which has long since ceased to be anything more than the PR arm of the corporate publishing world. And all this while enduring the tiresome lamentations of the very elites who preside over this debacle, bemoaning that “literature just isn’t what it used to be.” And when one of these writers inevitably fails to “succeed”, the blame is placed squarely on their shoulders —as if it were their fault for lacking talent or for not working hard enough. Despite the relentless bullshitification of the publishing market (and the market in general), we persist in the hypocrisy of believing in merit, or worse, convincing ourselves that failure and success are “deserved”.” Rather than rebelling against this structure of hypocrisy, we internalise it, projecting its cruelty inward.

But perhaps the greatest lesson of all is the revelation that the ideology of work requires no internal coherence to endure. On the contrary, the less grounded it is in reality, the more tenuous the connection between labour, success, and economic reward, the more fervently we cling to the virtues of effort, discipline, and the proverbial sweat of one’s brow. The more fruitless these efforts become, the more eagerly we engage in this ritualistic self-flagellation. Literature, now as marginal and financially ruinous as it was in the pre-printing days of Petrarch, finds itself under siege by a work ethic more implacable and unforgiving than ever, more oppressive than even at the height of Kurosawa’s career.

What is even more alarming is that this self-imposed suffering has become desirable; it has come to signify decency, honesty, and diligence. Never has it been more difficult to fashion a “career” out of writing, and yet, never has the act of writing been so wholly reduced to metrics: the number of articles published, the words written each day, the hours logged, the books consumed. More than ever, artists must not only exaggerate how much they work, but also frame their labour as something inherently difficult, serious, and responsible, deserving of respect simply because it is endured. More than ever, we manufacture sophisticated excuses to justify how cruel we’ve made creation, disguising the horrors of toil in grand notions like “the transcendent value of the work,” “personal growth,” or “the transformational and emancipatory power of art”, each phrase little more than a variant of the same empty rhetoric. And more than ever, it seems laughably naïve to speak of pleasure, or of enjoying literature, as if such a notion were the indulgence of children or the folly of the uninitiated.

Ultimately, I believe that what is happening within literature and the arts reflects the broader condition of our time. Everywhere one looks, it becomes ever more apparent that the game is rigged, that meritocracy is little more than a cynical joke, that work itself, for the most part, is both unnecessary and absurd. And yet, this very work ethic intensifies; it becomes the bedrock of common sense, even the very definition of virtue. But why does no one rebel? Why do we persist in this farce? Perhaps because it is easier to endure the hypocrisy, the cruelty, the ever-increasing demands for self-sacrifice, than it is to confront the terrifying prospect of freedom.

For what would we do with all this unshackled liberty, if the only rule were to enjoy ourselves? Perhaps, in the end, it is not our prisons we fear most, but the open, wide possibility of emancipation.