leahbobet | Employment, entitlement, and the arts.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker -- Me vs. Us

Entry tags:

Employment, entitlement, and the arts.

All right, kids, buckle up. I'm going to ramble a bit.

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 ~~pounding 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.

Threaded | Flat

I'm not sure I agree with all of that, though definitely with some. as far as the issue of dignity and status of work, there are two groups of people I think are getting conflated: the trained monkey idiots ("You get paid for writing books? A trained monkey could do that!") and those who envy authors and others who get to do the work they love. I think the latter is perfectly reasonable, when it comes with the realization that beloved work is still work - and still not easy (especially for anyone working two jobs, or three books at a time, or whatever it takes). But the latter are certainly outshouted and probably greatly outnumbered by the trained-monkey crowd.

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.

This? This is a very good, thoughtful post and you should feel good. I agree and empathize with an awful lot of this, dayjob and writerly things alike.

Really interesting post, and a topic I'm glad you mentioned because I'm curious to see what sorts of discussions it might lead to.

I'm a SAHM who writes. Talk about feeling invisible.

Huh. When I read something really brilliant, I'm not at all sure that the author is still invisible to me. Maybe this is because I spend too much time talking to/with/about writers, so my perception isn't the same as a "normal" reader.

I have a friend who works for the state here who, in addition to the usual "must be nice to be able to not work hard" comments also gets people declaring jealously over the fact he now gets Fridays off....because the state decided to save money by not paying him (and other state employees) to work 5 days, rather than increasing taxes. Yeah, unpaid days off are awesome when you have a mortgage and other expenses.

I just commented on pretty much this exact same thing over on Lynn Flewelling's journal -- I run into people all the time who seem to resent the fact that I enjoy my work.

My initial instinct is to tell these people to fuck off, which generally does nothing to decrease the resentment factor.

It sounds like there's a lurking assumption, among the people who give you shit about work, that since when civilians have to deal with public-sector employees it generally sucks for the civilians, that public-sector jobs must themselves be joyless and soul-sucking,

Never mind that if a public-sector job were the equivalent of, say, forty hours a week in line at the DMV, there would be no public-sector employees, as they would have all jumped out windows by now.

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 admit, I've been the person to snark on the people who enjoy their work, but that's because I just hate working so much. Every minute is torture. So when someone doesn't share my torture, I feel like *I* am getting the shaft. Does this make any sense? Really, it's because I am jealous, and you (generic you, not you you) should take pity on me, not tear me down even more. Someday I hope to be in your shoes. :)

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, especially the "work you love is still hard work" part. (points to icon)

I think you become less invisible by continuing to blog. I know my perceptions of books changed when I started going to cons and meeting real! writers! who talked to me! because they were real! people! Talking about these things, frequently and eloquently, is the only way to destigmatize them.

I have a small disagreement with the "writers go nuts" list. I agree that writers should feel free to defend themselves in an I-am-not-your-bitch kind of way, and a living writer's personal life should be strictly off limits. Fans should respect the writer's wishes about fanfic. But responding to bad reviews...doesn't help. People are going to read the book you didn't write, and you can't win that argument. (random-writer-you, not Cristalia-you.)

*nods*

I run into people who seem to be angry that I enjoy my work. I also run into people who give me shit because I'm on full disability. Obviously I'm a lazy, indulged artist who gives nothing useful back to society, because I do no real work.

People also seem to get upset and confused when they find out I'm a writer, but I'm not wealthy and don't spend endless evenings drinking cocktails at upper society functions.

I would just like to applaud this entire post.

And say that when it comes to this:

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?

I am very thankful that both my parents are public school teachers AND that I have several extended family members who also work for the same county government that I do. Because this means that my work rarely gives me reason to dread family get togethers. (other things do, but not this.) Even family members that would be the most likely suspects for this type of attitude don't have those opinions (or voice them).

I do, however, get it at work from people who don't want to pay their library fines, etc.

I also learned very quickly not to complain about obnoxious customers when I worked retail - because then everyone in my family would chime in about this one time they got bad customer service. In a tone of voice that suggested that I deserved what I got because someone else was crappy at their job (or had to follow crappy corporate rules or get fired).

Since one of my stories is about ringing up my cousin's grandmother, and her never realizing it was me because she couldn't be bothered to ever look me in the face at any point during the entire transaction, you can imagine how I felt about that.

This is actually part of what promoted my last blog; I neeeded a place to vent about the people that argued with me about whether or not Mark Twain wrote Huck Finn - because I could not do so anywhere else and still feel heard.

***

No answers at the moment for your last question, though. Except for some unexamined ideas about writer's blogs - and other ways of connecting authors and readers - being a useful thing.

No one likes my job either, unless something is dirty (I clean bathrooms and doornobs and floors Oh My!). My 'invisibility' is actually fun, when working in an office full of people clawing for the same job. Also, the smattering of Personal Assistants? Secretaries? What is the word for them now? Anyways, they are nice folk. They don't get freaked out when I pop into their office and wipe the evil nasty germs from their doors. As if I shouldn't exist, and don't happen to do the same thing every day at approximately the same time.

Or maybe I enjoy slinking around hearing silly conversations about how they spent their weekends and how Mr. Window Office kinda looks like a dark-haired Patrick Swayze. (No really he does! He's also very friendly and a little shmoozy to the younger new ladies in the office. Not that I've noticed >.>)

... ok now I'm just babbling about my job. Sorry.
Back on topic: See, I envy you for doing what you do. Honest! I has a small but growing collection of your published works. If only to say "See? This talent? I knows her! I ARE SPESHUL TO SAY THAT I KNOWS HER!" and feel all proud. ^_^

And... we needs to sit down and have tea. *nodnod* Whenever I manage to get myself to your neck of the concrete jungle.

Like you, I'm engaged in 60+ hours a week in the two day jobs. While the income from my writing has not been as reliable as yours, the side income from writing for the school newspaper while going to grad school to earn my teaching certificate was a respectable contribution to the household expenses (and replaced income from a very part time and much more stressful bookkeeping job). My writing income since has been on the smallish side. My day job is teaching, and boy, of all government workers that get criticized, teachers have it big, tall and handsome in the category of Let's Bash Those Who Have It Easy.

Of course, in that respect, it's not about the visibility/invisibility (I think) as much as it is that many people look at the teacher's job and think they could do it. And that summers off lose their appeal if you're the main income for the family and end up working multiple jobs in the summer to make ends meet.

But enough of that. I purely admire this:

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?

and join you in the contemplation of just how the heck I'm going to get there.

Yeah, I've been a ~government worker~ for almost two years now, and honestly? The hardest workers I've come across are those in the public sector. Especially since here in California our state/county jobs are always underfunded (because we're overrun with a voting population that wants oodles of services without paying taxes), we're ALL chronically understaffed and we're all working with the bare minimum of people. This means that we're ALL doing the work of 1.5-2 people, for relatively low pay compared to those doing similar jobs in the private sector.

Granted I've run across slackers in my work--those people who fit the description of the "typical government worker"--but honestly? I've met those same exact slackers when I worked in the private sector. The difference is that in the private sector, they get paid more for less work.

So yeah, totally feeling you on the annoying misperception of government workers. I dare anyone tell those of us who were working 60 hours a week at full tilt for four weeks in a row during the presidential election that we're spoiled and lazy.

"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."

Sometimes I could eat people's faces for their comments about the worth of my job (well, soon-to-be vocation when I graduate).

I'm training to be a medical illustrator. For some reason, people can only ever fixate on one of those words, which means I'm either automatically a doctor (huh?) and I should be able to answer all of their questions about their various and sundry ailments; or, I'm a dirty, no-good artist who will probably fail at life and starve because being an artist automatically means you will never make anything of your career, ever. *SIGH*

But, wrt the quote, I have had conversations with very well-meaning people (including my boyfriend) about why there is a need for us in the first place. After all, hasn't everything anatomical been illustrated already? Why don't publishers just pay each other royalties and publish the same images over and over? Never mind actually making sure artists get paid for the re-use, or the fact that books commission new illustrations so that they will actually stand out among their competitors...

People really do seem to assume that these pictures made themselves, and additionally that they were all made like 50 years ago. People look through science textbooks and never once consider that a Real Person had to sit down and actually draw all those figures! (Never mind the fact that medical illustrator is a total misnomer and we are actually web designers, animators, programmers and illustrators all in one). But yeah, I feel you about people thinking your job is worthless. :/

Well, it's not. You're creating culture. Even if people don't remember your name over the stories you've written, what you do DOES matter, and there are people out there who know it.

(And believe me, even if my work gets published in a book or magazine, you can bet no one's going to remember my name since medical illustrators are rarely afforded the status of co-author...)

Bah. I ranted. I apologize.

Whoooaa, so much I want to respond to and nod at and flail over! You have exceeded your Quota of Awesome today, madame!

Quickly, because I have to go teach, and apologies for responding without reading comments, 'coz, eh, you may have had someone address this --

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.

WHAT. WHAT! AUGH! I make inarticulate grr-ing noises!

Okay, but that wasn't what I was going to SAY. Which is actually:

this is FASCINATING to me, because while I totally see the culture of entitlement you're pointing out, and that impression that the civil service is the mainstay of the lazy and useless, I have been raised to aspire to it as the pinnacle of security. To work in a bookstore? In frontline tourism? In not-a-desk situations? Beneath me since I've got two degrees. ONLY an office will do, don't you know? The desk is essential to my new station in life.

And this perplexes me, because ultimately, does it mean that, in the eyes of my extended family, I'm supposed to aspire to laziness? Is that how we WIN, but getting paid to do nothing? It's just -- my mind is blown.

I do apologise for the lack of sense-making. I know I do that alot on your blog, but it's hard to think with 'splody-brains. But the dichotomy irks me.

There was a letter to the editor in our local paper recently claiming that what was wrong with the economy in this state was the percentage of jobs dedicated to making objects was too low and everybody else was a parasite. The writer was dead serious: if you are an auto mechanic, say, or a doctor, you are a blood-sucking parasite because you do not create widgets of any kind.

So yah, people have really destructively weird ideas about work.

The guy who hung the drywall in my basement came in one Monday and told me he'd spent the weekend hanging drywall in his niece's basement for free. "I'm crazy, I guess, but I love what I do," he said. I felt the need to reassure him that I considered this sensible, not crazy, but he was seriously looking apprehensive about admitting this to someone who was paying him. Like I was going to call up the main contractor and say, "Yah, I'm going to pay you $200 less. Take it out of Rob's wages. He likes hanging drywall, so I figure the love of the work should be reward enough."

And yet maybe he should be worried, because there are people who think the same of me, of us. So.

This is a wonderful post. Thanks for articulating stuff I've been thinking.

I've been thinking hard about this as a quality-of-life issue...can I continue to write thanklessly AND have a job that gets little respect? Do I need the affirmation of others to feel content with my work? Or should I learn to find that intrinsinc meaning that everyone seems to spout as the higher moral calling? Bleh.

(here via raecarson)

Great post. There are few lines of work that garner even less respect and affirmation from the outside world than writing; one of them is stay-at-home-parenthood.

Yeah, guess what I am.

Being both is akin to being ye old village idiot, methinks.

Yow, do I know where you're coming from. And all the more because I'm trying to keep the theatre company's head above water so I'm not keeping any of the money we make yet.

The other day in my review at the DayJob™ I had my review and they asked what I wanted to be doing in five years. "I mean, I know you have this hobby thing on the side," my boss said -- and I swear, I almost walked out of his office right then. If it only paid the bills the same way, I'd rather be washing dishes.

PS: I hope you know how much I admire you, not only because I enjoy some of the stuff you write quite a bit, but also because you do pull off a life that includes it with such style.

There's a lot to comment on and digest, but I'd list to just express my experiences being a temp who was in a government department.

I got it double dose. Somehow being a temp means I'm lazy, or that I don't -want- a permanent job...something. I'm not exactly up on how that mental dysfunction works. Combine that with working for the LCBO. Some of the hardest working, nicest people I've met. I was honoured to work along side them. But the shit I got. It must be nice. It must be easy. I'm sorry but the people I work along side got wicked benefits. I got none. I was on an hour to hour 'contract'. I was very, very lucky to build myself a niche there for two years (see: Managers who have a hard time with Excel). The threat of no monies was a constant one. Yet somehow I was extra lazy because not only was I working for the government, indirectly, but because I wasn't 'tied down' to the job.

I got very sick, very fast, of not being able to express my appreciation of certain aspects of the job, the FOOD & DRINK team was awesome beyond words, without getting the 'Must be nice' spiel. I started turning around going 'What part would you like? The lack of benefits? No vacation? The constant fear of dismissal? What part of that pie would you like a slice of?

Not to mention that if my agency had listed me as self employed, and they never did but I've known others who've had their agencies do that, then you don't get EI. Temp and self employed are especially taken advantage of in the case of 'We pay taxes but getting benefits should we need them is like pulling teeth via the butt'.

Funny, to me an author is always someone very much human - I have ongoing conversations in my head with some of them. Especially because I find that I follow certain themes in literature, and often a writer I like will appear to have the same obsessions as myself. So I try to imagine their childhood, what shaped them, etc.

And on a different note, I think many fields of work come with attendant stereotypes - mine is usually either: "you are so noble to be sacrificing so much to help the unfortunates of this world" or, its rather more hostile flipside: "who do you think you are to think you can change the world?". Underlying both reactions is the fundamental assumption that I got into my line of work in order to save the world, which is not the case. It's hard to explain to people that I do what I do for the same reasons that I write, because my work engages me on a personal level, taps into things that obsess and fascinate me for very subjective reasons that don't require much altruism on my part. And also that I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it.

Threaded | Flat

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject