Is speechwriting “really” writing? Or is it an occupation that “real” writers should shun, lest they cheapen their talents?

Well, at least it isn’t advertising.

Writers are not the only creative people who have to balance their duty to their art with their need to make a living. In an article published in the Wall Street Journal last week, columnist Emily Meehan suggests that the moral dilemma is particularly acute for younger artists who are just starting out.

She writes: “What happens when an artist must make art, but can't afford to make only art? Do you separate art and money, or try to find a way to join the two? Aspiring artists do have the option of pursuing one of any number of relatively creative vocations -- designing ad campaigns, writing slogans or composing music for the movies, for example. But plenty reject creative commercialism on principle, instead taking retail, bartending, blue-collar or other jobs because they are just that, jobs.”

For most of history, artists –- even the greatest artists –- would have found the distinction between “real” and “commercial” art incomprehensible, if not absurd. The great painters and sculptors of the Renaissance, for example, were wholly dependent on their patrons for their living, and the patrons looked upon them as little more than interior decorators.

Musicians fared no better. Many of Franz-Joseph Haydn’s compositions were intended as dinner music for his employers, the aristocratic Eszterhazy family, and their guests. Haydn actually wore a livery and dined with the footmen.

Even Beethoven, who may be said to have created the role model for the artist as hero, wasn’t above “cheapening” his art to earn the money he needed to write his masterpieces. As the critic Deems Taylor so amusingly phrased it, “Only a genius could have written the Ninth Symphony; but the man who composed Wellington’s Victory was obviously thinking about the rent.”

Commercialism has its advantages. An artist who has to work in order to eat is not going to sit around waiting for the muse to perch on his shoulder. And who’s to say that working for pay can’t produce great art? Johann Sebastian Bach, to give just a single illustration, composed his delightful Goldberg Variations for no better reason than to beguile the sleepless hours of a titled insomniac.

Perhaps it’s good for an artist to stay at least a little hungry. The most famous case in this regard is probably the Finnish composer, Jan Sibelius. Sibelius was awarded a government pension in 1897 so he could devote all his time to composition. But his pension wasn’t adequate to his needs, so he still had to compose to live. (According to one account, he once bartered a small composition for a leg of mutton.)

Sibelius’ pension was increased in 1926. That, along with his royalties, put him in comfortable circumstances. Perhaps too comfortable; although he lived for another 30 years, he scarcely composed another note.

Do I suffer artistic guilt over being a pen for hire? Not at all. As Dr. Samuel Johnson so aptly said: “Nobody but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”