I know I’m supposed to write about the craft of writing or publishing, but for just a moment I’d like to pause and be grateful for art.

Honestly, we are all artists. Writers create art with our words. It doesn’t matter what genre you write or how long your work is, nor even if you’ve published it or not. If you write fiction you are an artist. You are creating something from nothing. You are re-imagining the world to create a new one. You create people to inhabit this world, rules on how it works, what it looks like, and even the events that take place in this world.

This takes creativity and imagination. It takes persistence and patience. It takes the work of an artist.

Be proud of the art you create.

I love enjoying good art (and sometimes even bad art on occasion). The Louvre has recently made its entire collection available online for anyone to see and enjoy it. Just in case, here’s the link to that. The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History is also there for you to tour virtually. Even the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is there for you to enjoy online.

With the pandemic making it impossible for people to actually go and visit museums, a number of them have put their collections online for the world to enjoy. One amazing benefit to the horribleness that we’ve had to live with for the past year (aside from, you know, over two million people dying worldwide!).

But, happily, it’s not just the “great” artists whose work we can appreciate. There are thousands of artists making incredible art every day. You probably don’t even think about them. These are the artists who create advertisements we see and ignore. These are artists who create our animated video games that we love to play. There are artists who design the clothes we’re slouching in right now.

What got me thinking of this? One artist whose book I just got in the mail. He creates Dungeons and Dragons 5e adventures. I’ve only played the game a couple of times, but Antonio Demico’s art is so beautiful, I had to buy his book! (Click on the book cover to get your own copy.) (Side note: the picture on the top-right of my web home page was done by Demico and my picture on Facebook was done by another talented artist named Calliope.)

So, I ask you today to pause and be grateful for art. The art you create as an author. The art others created years (even centuries) ago. The art that is being created today and every day.