The writer title

I started writing this blog post a few weeks ago, wasn’t sure where I wanted to go with it, and thus let it float aimlessly in ‘drafts’ for a while. This is, apparently, the story of my writing-life at the moment. Anyway, this post’s focus is on this question:

When someone asks you what you do, do you say you’re a writer?

 Chances are, if you’re a writer with writer friends you’ve asked or been asked this question at least once in your life. I’ve recently found myself thinking about this. It’s a question composed of a confusing tangle of yet more questions. For example, there is what I have affectionately started calling ‘the writer title’ debate, which in essence questions what a writer is – Is everyone who writes a writer, or just those who do it professionally? Is writing something you merely do, or is it who you are? And if it’s who you are, does that mean the art of writing defines you as a person?

Like I said, confusing tangle…

Right now I’m thinking about this question in relation to a specific area of my life. I’m graduating in December, and I’m not going back to uni this year which means for the first time in 6 years, I’m not a student. Suddenly, I have the time to write. I no longer have to use my stories as procrastination – they have served as the perfect distraction from essays, mind maps, reading, research, and tutorial preparation. Now I’m suddenly swimming in time and I’m not using it productively.

Most of the time, this is me:

I’ve always identified as being a writer, but if anyone ever asked me ‘So, what do you do?’ I would always answer: ‘I’m a student.’ Now I have to reevaluate, not only what I do with my time, but what I’m not doing with it. What was once used for procrastination is now being neglected, because I don’t have anything to avoid, except actually writing the stories I spend most of my day thinking about.

As for the writer title, everyone has their own beliefs, and I’m sure I’ve babbled on the subject myself at some point already in this blog (I have scrolled up and down multiple times and I can’t find it, even though I’m about 99.9% sure I already blogged about it. Maybe I just thought about it. Or dreamed it. It’s sad, but my dreams really are that boring.) I for one would never say ‘I’m a writer’ – I’m much more likely to say ‘I’ve just finished uni’ or ‘I work in H&M part-time’ – and not because I’m embarrassed about writing like I once was.

Once, saying something like that would make people – my family – laugh. Y’know, that age old response of ‘everyone can write’ or ‘that isn’t even a real job.’ After years of studying it, I’ve started feeling less uneasy about embracing the pretend people in my life, to accepting I’m one of those people who leans against the wall at parties and thinks ‘I could totally be in my room right now with my pjs on, a cup of tea beside me, writing.’

What I do know is, it’s okay to be mildly anti-social, to watch the social butterfly from afar and think of them as a foreign entity. But by the same token, it’s also okay to be a writer and not write, to take the time to find your footing again. My life has tumbled and rearranged itself into something I haven’t been yet, and that’s going to take a little time to get used to.

‘Wonder tales’ and being awkwardly odd

Ignoring the ‘did he, didn’t he’ debate on whether Richard Dawkins said this or not, this is interesting. (What!? A blog about fairytales thinking an article about fairytales is interesting? How surprising, huh?) Bear with me, though. The linkage to this article is more to do with the defense of fairytale, than the theme of fairytale itself.

It feels like many articles I’ve read recently about fairytales are defensive. I blogged about something similar in February: ‘Readerly snobbery. It’s rather mean, isn’t it?’ As a writer and drawer (I say drawer because the alternative label ‘artist’ is not one I’d use to describe myself) I find, even as an adult, I’m defensive about these aspects of my life. As human beings we seem to have this belief that we have the right to an opinion on other people’s lives. We see it everyday, from the large things like sexuality, to the somewhat smaller things like what a person enjoys to read.

Growing up, I’ve always written stories and drawn pictures. I live in my own head. I’m not particularly vivacious, I’m awkward, I don’t really like crowds, and I spend the majority of my time with pretend people who are either shaped by words or pencil. To my extended family, this made me weird. The fact I chose to do my undergrad in Creative Writing was just plain odd. Anyone can write a story, why would you study that!? was said to me when I broke the happy news that I’d gotten into uni.

In some respects, I think we believe we’ve changed. With shows and books introducing awkward main characters, we think we’ve embraced the different. But is the stumbling, clumsy main character any different to the super-popular cheerleader of ten years ago? Both are beautiful, slim (possibly without even trying), heroic, and they always get the unattainable guy.

Ironically, as I wrote this list, I realised it fits mostly every one of the novel ideas I currently have scribbled into journals and scattered through Word documents. Does that completely undermine this entire blog post? 😀

EDIT: Upon reading through this post, it sort of feels like it wandered away at the end with no discernible conclusion. That was sort of on purpose, mainly because a conclusion may have come across very preachy. ‘Let’s stop being so judgmental. Take a leaf out of that girl from Mean Girl’s book… I too wish we could all get along like we used to in middle school. I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy…’ You get the idea.

I’d like to know what other people think, though. Do you feel like you have to defend yourself as a writer/artist/drawer/mime/whatever it is that happens to float your particular boat?

Readerly snobbery. It’s rather mean, isn’t it?

Read this really interesting blog post today about publishing. Considering the class this blog is for is all about this topic, I thought I’d dedicate a blog post to it. If I hadn’t gone down the blog route, I probably would have gone down the anthology/ezine route.

What I was most nervous about is probably what I would be most nervous about if I was publishing a novel: would anyone buy it except my mum? Probably not. Mainly because I’m still not at that stage with any of my stories that are longer than 10,000 words where I can say ‘Yeah, this is done. Yey me.’ Blogging is less of a commitment for the reader. They don’t need to enter their bank details to read a blog post, so I thought there was a bigger chance I could get a blog off the ground. But that’s a digression.

In the age of e-books, publishing is a pretty interesting topic. I have to admit, when I know a story is self-published I do always feel a little wary, maybe taking more time to research the online response. Some would call that snobbery, I would defend it as caution. There’s a certain trust in big publishing companies. You know – especially as a writer – how difficult it is to get published. Each story is vigorously edited, checked, and rechecked. There is no such guarantee with self-publishing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big advocate for the self-publishing route, and I support it. Thanks to Amazon, finding self-published books is all the easier. I have lived to regret some decisions, but I’ve also felt the same regret with books from well-trusted, professionally published writers I’ve been in a you-write-and-I-will-always-buy relationship with for years.

The snobbery of the creative world, I think, runs a little deeper. Mills and Boon, Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey – actually all erotica, are just a few examples of what can make a well-read person’s upper lip curl with derision. A lovely editor who came to do a talk in my Creative Writing class last year described it as an elitist view of reading. Readers, hard-core readers who have books spilling out of different rooms of the house, have almost created their own club. I can admit I was a member of this club for a long time – sneering at other people’s choices of books, looking down on stories I didn’t think were worth the paper they were written on. But at the end of the day, who made me the story expert?

We spend valuable writing time scoffing and poking fun at successful stories, not really thinking about the feelings connected to the readers of these stories. We constantly bang on about the importance of imagination, of how people should shut their TVs off and read a book and when the vast majority do – what do we do? We make fun of them for it. Yeah, you’re reading, but you’re reading the wrong type of book. Can’t you get it right, honestly?

It’s this snobbery that needs to stop. Yeah, there’s some terrible writing out there, stories that need a good edit or complete reshaping. You can shrug and learn from your mistake, take the book to a charity shop, use it as a doorstop…whatever. Just try not to make someone who enjoys it embarrassed about the fact they do.

Ironically, when I set the blog up I was thinking about this very subject. I wanted people to take risks with their theme, write creatively without the fear of being mocked. (See what I’m doing here? Totally turning this contemplative blog post into a call for submissions.) It’s the early stages of the blog, we’re still young, but I think we’re finding nice, supportive followers. So, fancy being part of Fairytale Corner? Send in a fairytale, you never know, you might gain a fan from doing so.