The 'double life' of artists with day jobs

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At several points in his life, Eli imagined what it would take to become a full-time artist — a photographer or illustrator free from client work. What he didn’t realize was that he already had an example of a different path right in front of him: his father, a practicing physician whose published poetry earned recognition from luminaries like John Ashbery.

Mason Currey’s most recent book explores these alternate paths. He’s the author of Daily Rituals, the beloved book that catalogued the working habits of nearly 200 artists, writers, and composers. His new book, Making Art and Making a Living, goes deeper — into the financial realities, the schemes, the compromises, and the surprising strategies that creatives have used to keep their work alive across centuries.

What he found is both humbling and strangely reassuring. Virginia Woolf had inherited investments. Kafka had insurance. Chantal Akerman had a cash register she skimmed from. John Cage had Italian game show winnings. And yet, running through all of it is the same question that Mason has been asking about his own life since the day he sat down to write a novel and couldn’t: How am I going to pay for this?

In this conversation, Mason walks us through the four funding models his book explores — family money, day jobs, patronage, and schemes — and what the lives of creatives from Kafka to Murakami can teach us about building a practice that actually lasts.

Bio

Mason Currey is the author of the Daily Rituals books, featuring brief profiles of the day-to-day working lives of more than 300 brilliant minds.

His latest book, Making Art and Making a Living, was published by Celadon Books on March 31, 2026.

Currey lives in Los Angeles and writes Subtle Maneuvers, a twice-monthly newsletter on the creative process.

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