I am so fucked off with how the world has gone to the dogs and in particular that little bit of the world I think I care about most, which is the Kingdom of Literature: for on top of the abolition of the Net Book Agreement, all sorts of other deleterious developments have worsened the lot of writers (at least in these islands) over the last fifteen years, among which, and in no particular order, are the following: the rise of branding; the enslavement of publishers to media endorsement by celebrity presenters; the obsession with the physical appearance of writers which in turn has meant publishers demand ever younger, ever more photogenic authors; the decline of the editor in publishing houses in order to save money; the abandonment by publishers of the idea that writers have lifelong careers and that given the right support over a lengthy period they can develop; the failure of payment for literary endeavour either to keep pace with inflation or to reflect the actual amount of labour involved in literary production; the atrophy of community (writers have never been more marginal and their enterprise more quixotic and ridiculous); and, finally, the eclipse of literary forms that once helped writers to survive, such as the short story, especially the short story broadcast on radio.This all has such strong personal relevance for me, and in the spirit of Gebler's honesty I'll explain why. For my first published short story I got £50 from the Transatlantic Review, and like Gebler I wrote it in a private trance after a childhood and young adulthood of receptive reading. Ten years later I too was teaching creative writing and editing and writing reports and reviews. I was no longer writing short stories - the lit mags were all dying and no one was paying for them any more. I was writing radio plays, because they did pay, and writing them increasingly according to the marketing notions of commissioning editors without literary backgrounds and concerned with focus groups. I was running around in the kind of circles Gebler describes, hyped up, with that attitude he describes, an aggressive acquisitive kind of creativity, and no longer receptive to my unconscious in the way that is conducive to true art.
In the end I came to the decision that unless I gave up the idea of being able to keep myself and stopped all this extraneous activity I was never going to get back to that truly productive 'imaginative trance'. It's difficult to say publicly that it went against the grain to be kept by my partner, since to other writers, including I imagine Gebler, that's an enviable option they don't have, but I didn't find it easy to give up my financial independence. As a result, though, it has mattered less to me that being published by a small literary publisher (which I am) means basically making no money on one's writing. At least it has meant that I can concentrate again at last in the right way and produce work with which I can be truly happy. And at long last I've found the psychic space to sink properly into a longer novel for which I previously didn't have the time or headspace - though it's required so much that I've neglected this blog recently, and for that I apologise...
Is this where we've got then? To a point where only those who are kept can afford to write exclusively and with proper attention - unless, that is, they write commercial fiction?
13 comments:
Interesting discussion going on on my blog as well - this article certainly has got the writing world fizzing. Lets hope it sells a few books for him as well, as an offshoot.
I shared your anxiety at letting someone else carry the financial burden - I've always contributed, however small that contribution was. And it wasn't until I had a talking to from a relatively well known and experienced writer - and feminist - who gave my husband the title 'Patron of the Arts' that it all felt much easier!
I think that's exactly where we've come. Never having had any money (and with a wife whose disability means she can work very infrequently, being - with my own disability being less severe - in the position of sometimes having to earn and care for both) I have never really seen this as odd.
It's only just occurred to me why that probably is. I had always assumed it was a reflection of personal insecurities and inadequacies - writng is my passion, why on earth should I expect to be paid a living wage for it? It has always just seemed obvious I would only be paid if people in sufficient numbers wanted to read, and that the things I really want to write would have to be done in the expectation of no return and in between a full-time job, care duties, and things that might just pay. And I've always been slightly ambivalent towards writers who, because they have been paid in the past, thought that meant they *should* be paid again for their passion - all absolutely fine if they're more in demand than me, but the idea of desert seems to be typical of the kind of social immobility we see everywhere.
I have a feeling that part of the answer though lies in the impact the 80s made on my youth. The constant images of skilled workers on the dustcart of society because there was no more need for them. Writers have clung on longer, but the arts and the steel industry, or shipbuilding, are maybe not so different, and maybe bear a similar relation in our society's psyche to the all, er, consuming service industry. It's an interesting thought at least, as part of the bigger debate of how we value the artist (which should I think be a separate but related debate from how we value arts).
It is a really important article, I think - there was (past tense!) a fascinating discussion thread on my blog - but it was chewed up! Anyway - peeps seems to be reposting or starting again - so do join in - the nub of the thoughts seem to be both that he is depressed - and exhibiting uber-negative symptoms as a result - which is unhelpful to anyone, especially him. That his terminology is lazy 'writing to steal' is a real 'come-on' to people like the moral-free leprechaun who nicked my work - and that he doesn't have to stay doing this if he doesn't want to... (but then he is 56 - I wonder how much that fuels the mind-set.)
Artists have always been "kept", if not by their families than by governments or royalty. Think of the Medicis. And I do believe that the people who may not create things themselves but facilitate others in their creating, have an important role. If an artist wants to keep his/her art to herself and not share it, then fine. Don't publish or show it. But if an artist wants to use her art to communicate and interact with the world at large, then you have to allow others to do their part, whether they are teachers or editors or gallery owners or publishers or "patrons ". I have finally come to believe that I "earn my keep" in many ways, 1 of which is by producing art to the best of my ability. The form and source of that remuneration is changeable and not relevant to the work I do - unless it happens to affect or become a part of the work itself.
Dan, I have shared that attitude in the past, but it does come down a question of what we value socially. and as you say, that's big debate...
You're so right, Sue. Writing takes time and commitment, and if we are either not paid to do it or not kept by others to do it, we can't do it. Simps. We can't heal people if we aren't paid to be docs, etc etc, and writing's no different. The problem as outlined by Gebler is that society values less and less what 'non-commercial' writers do so doesn't pay them, and if you think that matters it's depressing. It's very depressing not be able to do it in the way you really want to do it, simply because you have to keep a yourself and/or a family, and this is what Gebler's saying. I think it's insulting and indeed dangerous to dismiss his comments as simply the result of his private depression, when he makes clear that it's the conditions of the industry that are depressing him. I was certainly depressed when I was in his situation.
I also think his tone is rhetorical and deliberately adopted to make a point: he's a skilled writer, remember.
As for the 'stealing' thing, V, I think his language is unfortunate but I don't think he's talking about crudely nicking other people's ideas. As I say in the post I think I know what he means and feel I also experienced it when I was writing for radio and generally trying to be a 'professional' writer: you are constantly aware of the market (it's being shoved down your throat) and you are constantly weighing ideas for suitability for the market, and rejecting others which might emerge from your unconscious as not suitable - because of the latter constantly on the look-out for ideas in your own life, rather than waiting for things to emerge as important later. It becomes a horrible, mechanistic sort of creativity, and yes, acquisitive, because it forces you to look at what works in commercial terms and mould yourself the same way - not to mention the fact that commissioning editors are always telling you they want more stuff like the the stuff they've already succeeded in selling...
PS, Sue: I realise now that you were making an objection to my final question. But what I'm trying to say is that the official forms of patronage are shrinking and it's becoming less and less easy to write if you're not kept privately and unofficially, by, say, a partner.
It would be wonderful to earn enough from writing to abandon everything else. I've never been able to do that; for the past twenty-five years I've worked as a teacher, freelance editor (editing up to 60,000 words a month of the most unutterably dreary technical stuff), doing private lessons and, for the past seven years, caring for dying parents on a part- and then full-time basis, flying between countries at least once a month. During this time, I've written five novels, two of them published, and dozens of short stories, scraps of journalism, hundreds of blog posts and God knows what else. I don't know how, but I've done it and I'll carry on doing it until some good fairy transforms a novel of mine into a film and I make some real money from the work I've produced. This isn't a request for praise - which I don't deserve or want (well, a little, perhaps)- but a preamble to the point I really want to make. That what takes time from writing is not so much the work we have to do for a living, which might be time-consuming but might also be also the raw material we need, the grit in the creative stomach. It's all the writing-related peripheral stuff, which has nothing to do with creativity and everything to do with self-promotion. It's the hours spent doing what publishers used to do, but don't do any longer, for all kinds of reasons. The motives behind writing, and writing sufficiently and sufficiently well to become publishable, are manifold, some of them more noble than others, some of them hidden to ourselves. But to reduce what we do to product isn't - or shouldn't be - the job of the writer, but of the person who markets the writing, who takes the risk and, if all goes well, makes the money, or a good part of it; in a world where self-publishing is likely to be increasingly the norm, the conflation of these roles is beginning to be taken for granted, and this can do lasting damage to the writer's work.
re 'stealing' - I understand, and sympathise with him, E. I wonder if there is always that side of the mind at work - we have to be open to the sparks that might light something up for us in our own work. It was the terminology that got me. I am sensitised to it, after my experiences - who wouldn't be! I am sad for him - and think his article ought to be compulsory reading for all on CW courses... to sort those who think they are going to be rich from the realists.
Yes, V, I do understand why you are sensitised to that language. (Terrible experience!)
Charles you are so right of course. I've written a lot about this recently, and it's an aspect I left out of this post for the sake of a clear argument re the other stuff: even though I gave up trying to be a 'professional' writer and have had the luxury of being kept, I have to say I've felt even more squeezed by the promotion stuff...
My real question is which non-commercial writers/artists a society should value. The gatekeeping system adopted by publishers is (quite rightly as long as thry're businesses) based on commerciality, so we *can't* refer to those writers who are now or have been in the past published. So how *do* we decide? As a writer of non-commercial fiction I have no real issues with publishers as gatekeepers (that's another world, one I'm happy enough not to be part of), but I *very* much have a problem with someone (other than private patrons - they may of course do what they will according to taste) deciding which writers should be provided with a living on non-commercial criteria, because the whys wherefores and whats of those criteria seem so riddled with problems I can't see how they could operate other than as ideological or social props.
It sounds like an artistic paradise that writers would be supported, and the problem with paradises is that they don't work in practice. I can't see writer-funding working other than as a support for those who can't quite make a living as a published writer - a top-up for midlisters, or a bridging loan for creative writing graduates. In other words, those whose non-commercial work is valued would still be selected ultimately with some kind of reference to commercial criteria. And for me that would perpetuate social immobility (by propping up those already on the inside) rather than overcoming it (by giving a lifeline to those doing important work on the outside).
I would love society to find a way to fund the arts progressively and avoid this problem - but if the funding would work to prop up those already within the system, I would rather the money were spent elsewhere. It very much *is* about what we value as a society - but I think we must avoid using generic terms like "the arts" and we must avoid letting interest groups smuggle themselves in under the cover that umbrella terms such as "the arts" provides.
V, your first comment has only just appeared in my comments folder - after all this time! And I've had no email notification of it; I'm getting no notifications at all. Blogger seems to be going haywire
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