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Entry tags:
Employment, entitlement, and the arts.
All right, kids, buckle up. I'm going to ramble a bit.
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matociquala posted last night on her workweek and how long it takes her to write a book. What this post is actually about, although it comes clearer in the comments, is another aspect of the question that spurred it: The perception of authors as overpaid, spoiled, wealthy, greedy or...maybe just indulged members of our society. The perception, in short, of art as a class of work valued less than other classes of work.
I tangle with this thing a lot.
I am a working writer. No, I am not a writer who has a novel in print (and we'll get into the hobbyist perception that goes with that another time), but I am a writer who has been writing for eatin' money since early 2003 or so, which is when I started being reliably paid for stuff. Trufax: in second year I regularly paid my phone bill with the dribs and drabs of money from poetry sales. Writing still composes a non-major, but non-trivial part of my household income: My support staff and moderation gig at the OWW helps me keep chipping away at my school debt, and Shadow Unit, while not even remotely paying for the time we put into it at this juncture, kicked me enough cash last year to cover a month's worth of groceries and (non-rent) bills.
Astruepenny has pointed out this week it's very hard to make ends meet as a writer. So unlike Bear and Sarah, I am also the proud possessor of a full-time Dayjob with really solid benefits.
My Dayjob is in the public sector, which is another place with some class-of-work issues.
There was a point early last year, when I was still fairly new to the job and quite blissful about it (I have a truly great office full of truly awesome persons) where I got very upset about my inability to communicate to people outside government that I really liked my brand new job. Any enthusiasm I had about my work would be automagically translated into Well, must be nice to have it that good and not have to work hard. You're having fun? Is that my tax dollars at work? The base assumption was that because clearly all public servants are spoiled and lazy and sheltered by the hand of a government employer, the enjoyment I got out of my job must be from lying on the couch and eating bonbons instead ofpounding steel all day like real manly men doing actual, real work. It couldn't be that I had a good boss, good co-workers, and interesting, intellectually stimulating work; it must have been that my work was not legitimate, not demanding. To this day, I quite literally cannot talk about anything fun that happens in my office -- silly water cooler stories, lunch table anecdotes, nothing -- in mixed company without getting some form of blowback. Period.
I've learned to work around and weather the thing since, but it was actually quite hurtful. I couldn't share a good thing about my life anywhere but with my most trusted friends. It was like trying to show someone a butterfly and having the thing -- and your hand -- pissed on and then set on fire.
So basically I get shafted coming and going on this one. Of the 60+ hours of work I put into an average workweek, none of it is considered valued or legitimate work outside of my various insider circles. I have one career where I have to step carefully if I want to express the most basic pride in my work, and one career where I have to step carefully if I want to utter the mildest complaint about it.
And that means I'm sort of fascinated by the psychology behind perception of work: Why and how do we decide which fields of work are more "real" than others? How have we somehow accorded legitimacy to some -- totally necessary -- functions in society and yet routinely disparage other -- totally necessary -- functions? Why do normally right-thinking people open their mouths and drop these assumptions onto the floor every day?
I think about this a lot. I tangle with it a lot.
I think it's something to do with a class of products or services that, to people without expert knowledge, seem to self-create or self-maintain; that we feel have always been there. It's to do with the nature of work where, when it's done right, the worker isn't even noticed.
Let me go into that a bit.
People get pissed off at customer service or restaurant wait service if it's obtrusive. People only notice that grocery store stockpersons exist when something's not on the shelf. People only remember the existence of the Ministry of Transportation when there's a pothole. People get pissy at subway repairs because the inherent and subtextual expectation is that while of course subways need to be fixed, the fixing of them should be invisible. We should never see it happen, or it has essentially failed.
People only notice the author in the text, like the waiter or subway repairman or stockperson, if they feel something has gone wrong.
If we do our job right, the logic goes -- and I'm not getting into whether this is right or wrong today -- the reader shouldn't even see us. One paragraph at the back of the book saying general things about our pets, maybe where we live. Standard words at the front about who made this book possible; all very much to the forms. Look at the emphasis that creates, just by inference: the important thing is the book. We, the authors, should be completely occluded, completely obscured by the text itself.
When I pull off a good story, a paragraph that crunches into someone's chest like a wrecking ball, the book's there in their vision and it's fifty feet tall, bright as noon, eating up everything and roaring like a cannonball.
I'm not.
I'm invisible.
Here's the problem with that notion of successful art -- a notion that okay, I can't really argue with. The notion of text that lives head and shoulders above its author, text that takes on a life of its own and forms a relationship with the reader that the author really has no part of is really kind of glorious. I think a lot of us crave it a bit: making something that's bigger than us.
Thing is, it gets really hard to assert the personal or financial rights of invisible people.
This is why the argument against writing fanfic of works whose authors are uncomfortable with it never gets anywhere. This is why things like arts grants, book prices, royalty statements, financial need are considered faintly distasteful topics in a lot of writing circles, or why we talk about them in lowered tones or prescreened company. This is why it's such a big deal when an author "goes nuts" and engages readers who criticize their book, their lifestyle, their looks, their person, and why that behaviour is stomped on and stigmatized so hard. This is why reactions such as that which occurred on the Kindle forum about this Amazon kerfuffle happen. To the greater reading public, authors are invisible people. We don't exist, and therefore neither do our needs.
The question becomes, then: how to create fiction that stands like a pillar of fire in someone else's brain, to not get between my fiction and its reader, and yet, keep myself firmly in existence?
That one's for you, team. I am sadly out of answers tonight.
matociquala posted last night on her workweek and how long it takes her to write a book. What this post is actually about, although it comes clearer in the comments, is another aspect of the question that spurred it: The perception of authors as overpaid, spoiled, wealthy, greedy or...maybe just indulged members of our society. The perception, in short, of art as a class of work valued less than other classes of work.I tangle with this thing a lot.
I am a working writer. No, I am not a writer who has a novel in print (and we'll get into the hobbyist perception that goes with that another time), but I am a writer who has been writing for eatin' money since early 2003 or so, which is when I started being reliably paid for stuff. Trufax: in second year I regularly paid my phone bill with the dribs and drabs of money from poetry sales. Writing still composes a non-major, but non-trivial part of my household income: My support staff and moderation gig at the OWW helps me keep chipping away at my school debt, and Shadow Unit, while not even remotely paying for the time we put into it at this juncture, kicked me enough cash last year to cover a month's worth of groceries and (non-rent) bills.
As
truepenny has pointed out this week it's very hard to make ends meet as a writer. So unlike Bear and Sarah, I am also the proud possessor of a full-time Dayjob with really solid benefits.My Dayjob is in the public sector, which is another place with some class-of-work issues.
There was a point early last year, when I was still fairly new to the job and quite blissful about it (I have a truly great office full of truly awesome persons) where I got very upset about my inability to communicate to people outside government that I really liked my brand new job. Any enthusiasm I had about my work would be automagically translated into Well, must be nice to have it that good and not have to work hard. You're having fun? Is that my tax dollars at work? The base assumption was that because clearly all public servants are spoiled and lazy and sheltered by the hand of a government employer, the enjoyment I got out of my job must be from lying on the couch and eating bonbons instead of
I've learned to work around and weather the thing since, but it was actually quite hurtful. I couldn't share a good thing about my life anywhere but with my most trusted friends. It was like trying to show someone a butterfly and having the thing -- and your hand -- pissed on and then set on fire.
So basically I get shafted coming and going on this one. Of the 60+ hours of work I put into an average workweek, none of it is considered valued or legitimate work outside of my various insider circles. I have one career where I have to step carefully if I want to express the most basic pride in my work, and one career where I have to step carefully if I want to utter the mildest complaint about it.
And that means I'm sort of fascinated by the psychology behind perception of work: Why and how do we decide which fields of work are more "real" than others? How have we somehow accorded legitimacy to some -- totally necessary -- functions in society and yet routinely disparage other -- totally necessary -- functions? Why do normally right-thinking people open their mouths and drop these assumptions onto the floor every day?
I think about this a lot. I tangle with it a lot.
I think it's something to do with a class of products or services that, to people without expert knowledge, seem to self-create or self-maintain; that we feel have always been there. It's to do with the nature of work where, when it's done right, the worker isn't even noticed.
Let me go into that a bit.
People get pissed off at customer service or restaurant wait service if it's obtrusive. People only notice that grocery store stockpersons exist when something's not on the shelf. People only remember the existence of the Ministry of Transportation when there's a pothole. People get pissy at subway repairs because the inherent and subtextual expectation is that while of course subways need to be fixed, the fixing of them should be invisible. We should never see it happen, or it has essentially failed.
People only notice the author in the text, like the waiter or subway repairman or stockperson, if they feel something has gone wrong.
If we do our job right, the logic goes -- and I'm not getting into whether this is right or wrong today -- the reader shouldn't even see us. One paragraph at the back of the book saying general things about our pets, maybe where we live. Standard words at the front about who made this book possible; all very much to the forms. Look at the emphasis that creates, just by inference: the important thing is the book. We, the authors, should be completely occluded, completely obscured by the text itself.
When I pull off a good story, a paragraph that crunches into someone's chest like a wrecking ball, the book's there in their vision and it's fifty feet tall, bright as noon, eating up everything and roaring like a cannonball.
I'm not.
I'm invisible.
Here's the problem with that notion of successful art -- a notion that okay, I can't really argue with. The notion of text that lives head and shoulders above its author, text that takes on a life of its own and forms a relationship with the reader that the author really has no part of is really kind of glorious. I think a lot of us crave it a bit: making something that's bigger than us.
Thing is, it gets really hard to assert the personal or financial rights of invisible people.
This is why the argument against writing fanfic of works whose authors are uncomfortable with it never gets anywhere. This is why things like arts grants, book prices, royalty statements, financial need are considered faintly distasteful topics in a lot of writing circles, or why we talk about them in lowered tones or prescreened company. This is why it's such a big deal when an author "goes nuts" and engages readers who criticize their book, their lifestyle, their looks, their person, and why that behaviour is stomped on and stigmatized so hard. This is why reactions such as that which occurred on the Kindle forum about this Amazon kerfuffle happen. To the greater reading public, authors are invisible people. We don't exist, and therefore neither do our needs.
The question becomes, then: how to create fiction that stands like a pillar of fire in someone else's brain, to not get between my fiction and its reader, and yet, keep myself firmly in existence?
That one's for you, team. I am sadly out of answers tonight.
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On the second point, I was reading a great essay last night by Anne Fadiman (it's in At Large and At Small discussing two conflicting viewpoints: that the author doesn't matter and the work must speak for itself; and that the author does matter and thus e.g. Moby Dick is less valuable because Herman Melville beat his wife and was a horrible person. She argues for a middle ground, understanding what's written in context of the author and her times (not banning Huck Finn because it's anti-racist by 19th c. standards but not 21st c. standards) but also using one's own viewpoint in one's own reading experience (feeling included within the male-centric terms used in the Declaration of Independence). I probably haven't explained it well; Fadiman says it much better.
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Agreeing with me isn't usually a requirement for hanging out here. *g*
Huh. I think I must hunt that essay up, and yeah, I am getting what you're saying. People get really...convenient about the pertinence of the author and the author's politics when it comes to evaluating or judging a work. It's everything when it suits the reader and then nothing when it suits the reader, and yes, those are both extremist black-and-white positions and every extremist black-and-white position will inevitably run into a situation when it fails utterly to serve anyone's needs anywhere.
Maybe it's just because I am an Enemy (tm) to biographical criticism, but that hop on the tracks of logic where the author can and can't be important to the reading of the work has never quite sat right with me.
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My entirely solipsist philsophy of reading is that I take the view that gets me the best to read. That means that I ignore Dorothy Sayers' horrible handling of Jewish characters and blame it on the times, for love of rest of her work, but give Mark Twain credit for being anti-racist in the context of *his* times. Because Huck Finn and Gaudy Night are great books and I don't want to deprive myself of either. It's a little harder to ignore with living authors; I'm at the point where I'm not likely to be seeking out anything new by Orson Scott Card. But if I feel like rereading a copy I already own of Alvin Maker, I'll appreciate it for what's in it, not what Card said outside the book.
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That seems actually pretty healthy. And y'know, when you put it like that, I see the tie back to the original post better: this is the decision as to whether the relationship between the reader and the book is a couple or a threesome, with the author in bed with you too.
Mine is similar on the purchasing front. I'll stop purchasing -- or when I was at the bookstore, twice decided to stop handselling -- the work of authors whose personal actions raised my eyebrow high enough that I actually felt no desire, period, to financially support them anymore, to the point where I couldn't effectively praise their books without getting a sour taste in my mouth. But I don't tend to make a big deal out of that, and on the whole I generally keep book and author quite seperate. Even people I don't like or agree with frequently have interesting things to say.
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What you say makes a lot of sense; with a dead artist, if I buy a book of poems by Ezra Pound, I'm not supporting his anti-Semitic views - and if I buy a collection of Tom Jefferson's writings the money isn't going to support a plantation run on slave labor. But if I buy a book by James Dobson, profits may well go into Focus on the Family.
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Not that the world is free of problematic counterexamples, of course, but "disagree with" and "leave bad taste in my mouth" are somewhat different for me.
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I don't get it either. It's not that hard to make up a plot, though harder to make up a good one. And it's not hard at all to put some words on a page - see, I just did! But you would think that it would take very little imagination to realize the size of the job involved in (physically) putting a *whole book's worth* of words on the page, not to mention all the revision. And more important, the mental side: telling that plot so it comes alive, building a world a reader can step into, making characters real, and weaving together threads of plot and subplot. I *know* I can't do all that (not without a hell of a lot of learning at the least, but I don't think the root of the matter is really in me), and it only took me about a minute of thinking to realize that.
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