Selling your art doesn’t make it less real. Starving for it doesn’t make it more real either.

Money has nothing to do with whether the work is honest. Getting paid does not contaminate a drawing, and going hungry does not bless it. The romance of the suffering artist is comfortable because it lets struggle stand in for quality, and it quietly tells anyone with rent to pay that they are not serious. What matters is whether you made the thing you meant to make.

If someone offers to pay you for something you made, let them, and set a price you would not resent. If nobody has yet, keep making it anyway.