Note: This week's blog is a guest post by Jonathan Langford. If you would like to contribute a guest post, please contact Darlene Young at youngbookshelf at gmail dot com.

There’s a certain sense of validation, in our commercial culture, that comes with being paid for one’s work. This is at least as true in literature as elsewhere. Anyone (or so the thinking goes) can write a novel. The real test is whether you can get someone (not yourself) to pay money to publish it.

I sometimes get the sense that this applies not only to art but also to those who create it. Being a “professional” writer — i.e., someone who supports yourself financially through your writing — carries with it a kind of moral and artistic authority, and perhaps rightly so. A professional career in writing provides evidence of sustained quality, plus opportunities (and a powerful incentive) to improve over time.

Not to mention the fact that professionalism provides a partial solution to the often-discussed problem of Mormon ambivalence toward the arts. Otherwise pointless endeavors gain value, in the LDS scheme of things, if one can make a living from them. Art that brings in little or no money, on the other hand, is suspect at best, simply because it takes time away from supporting oneself and one’s family. More...