There's
nothing static or regular or "average" about writing and painting. The
spectrum of failure borders on infinity, and there's nothing you can do
for you, as an "author", to secure your creative "business". There's
actually a cold war going on between your imagination and your
intelligence that, occasionally, erupts into a full scale conflict.
Either way, you end up a prisoner. A miserable slave of either your
brain or your heart. In time, you learn to take this tyranny as a mark
of existential competence that every now and then turns into a moment
of creative bliss. That you can use. And that only.
As for the peaceful middle road where everyone feels at ease, I'd take
it as a mark of pleasant nothingness and decadent "democracy". That's
where strategy is mistaken for approval, opinion is mistaken for
judgment, emotion is mistaken for poetry, arrogance for wisdom, and
Manhattan for art.
.