Rhythm changes something about your writing. It’s a game that you play to distort your normal practices into a more interesting shape – to distort the writing. Who wants to keep writing the same old shit over and over?
A winning formula is a death knell for an artist, but oil for a machine. Who wants to be a machine? No one. Art is the opposite of that mechanical flow. The mechanical flow is hamburgers and commerce.
But wouldn’t a winning formula equal bucks rolling in? If I don’t want that is there something wrong with me? Am I naive? Am I impractical? Can you take your art and turn it into money and retain its purity? Surely. It is hard to wrap one’s head around these things sometimes and square away what can seem like two incommensurate ideas.
It may seem strange, but successful artist seems like such an oxymoron, and that is sad. I would love to make it less oxymoronic in myself, as would most artists, but it isn’t always the easiest thing to achieve. Keep struggling onward though, right?