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William Carlos Williams on the freedom of keeping your day job

William Carlos Williams on the freedom of keeping your day job

In his Autobiography, William Carlos Williams recounts what led him to pursue medicine as a career:

No one was ever going to be in a position to tell me what to write, and you can say that again. No one, and I meant no one (for money) was ever (never) going to tell me how or what I was going to write. That was number one…

I wasn’t going to make any money by writing. Therefore I had to have a means to support myself…for I didn’t intend to die for art nor to be bedbug food for it…

It was money that finally decided me. I would continue medicine, for I was determined to be a poet; only medicine, a job I enjoyed, would make it possible for me to live and write as I wanted to. I would live: that first, and write, by God, as I wanted to if it took me all eternity to accomplish my design. My furious wish was to be normal, undrunk, balanced in everything. I would marry (but not yet!) have children and still write, in fact, therefore to write. I would not court disease, live in the slums for the sake of art, give lice a holiday. I would not “die for art,” but live for it, grimly! and work, work, work (like Pop), beat the game and be free (like Mom, poor soul!) to write, write as I alone should write…

Filed under: day job

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• day job
• keep your day job
• william carlos williams
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   Attempts to share this via tumblr-native means are failing … via hypotheticalwren via austinkleon

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    I do not wish to compare my humble self to the great WCW, but substitute “Japanese government bureaucracy” for...

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    Splendid. Autobiography first, then into his poetry I go.

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    I wasn’t going to make any money by writing. Therefore I had to have a means to support myself…for I didn’t intend to...

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    i enjoyed this.

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    These words speak...me deeply. Too bad I did not go into something more lucrative like...

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