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On Writing and Identity

JA May 27

The question of what you ‘do’ is a staple part of any conversation, cropping up inevitably somewhere after the hellos and generic comments about the place/day/location/weather. A big part of it, I suppose, reflects just how much our chosen ‘profession’ is thought to reflect on who we are (whatever that means nowadays).

Most of time, I’ll juggle between several options – some days it’s a student (sometimes arts, sometimes law), other days I’ll say I work in publishing or, if I’m feeling particularly specific, that I’m an editorial assistant. I don’t think that I’ve ever quite managed to say ‘writer’, the noun. If the conversation pans down that path, I usually resort to the verb (‘sometimes I write’), or the aspirational (‘trying to write’).

First off, I don’t want to romanticise the desire to identify as a writer too much – at the end of the day, we are lucky to get to write and perception is just a small part of it, but the various clichés or social cringes that come with this are a point of interest. I suppose a lot of my evasions have to do with a general unwillingness to have to go into the exposition that must necessarily follow, particularly amongst a certain crowd, who might ask how much you’ve had published, and where, as if trying to work out just how much of you is a legitimate writer and how much isn’t. Or worse still, follow-up with the question ‘But what do you really do?’, because after all, art can only ever be a hobby and doesn’t fly in the ‘real world’. Ben O’Mara has written a fantastic essay on this in the current June edition of Meanjin. He recalls a conversation with his manager, who suggested, with the best of intentions, that he ‘meet regularly with a group of friends to help [him] deal with [his] passion?’ He continues:

My accountant was worse. He is a nice guy, successful. He doesn’t look much older than me, but has a wife, children, a nice home in an attractive Melbourne suburb and a relaxed, easygoing demeanour that belies the years he has spent crunching numbers. Many finance people I’ve worked with can be quite uptight. But when he tried to list my freelance writing work as ‘just a hobby’ on my tax return, I almost punched him in the face. In the true spirit of artistic wankery, I thrust my ABN at him, announced myself as a professional writer, proudly declared the two thousand dollars I’d made in articles (which paled in comparison with my staff salary), and demanded we find more tax deductions for all my hard writing work. He sheepishly obliged.

Maybe it’s also a little to do with a general lack of entitlement – I know that I’ve been lucky enough to have my first novel signed, but I still don’t feel any different about myself than I did before. At the airport, I once tried putting ‘writer’ on that green customs card – it felt strange and daggy/cool, but also a bit like a lie, because realistically, with the exception of last year, writing is not what takes up the most of my time. In fact, quite the opposite. Spike has written before about day jobs and the like, and realistically I think that breaking up the routine can be good thing. Even if I had the chance to write full-time, I’m not sure that I would, however it’s a slippery slope between hoping to write most of the time to not at all. Over at the Millions, Nell Boeschenstein has written frankly about the contrast between what your resume might say about you, and how you might perceive yourself:

By the time I graduated from college, enough people had told me I couldn’t make a living this way for me to begin trying to jury rig my skills and interests into skills and interests that paid. I worked as an English teacher, a crime reporter, a waitress, a library assistant, and as a research assistant for authors. With each job I told myself it was temporary: just a job until I could forge a writing career. Alas, the most money I’ve ever earned for a piece of writing I’ve written because I wanted to write it is $50, and that was a month ago. Until recently I had—naively—not considered fully demoting my future writing career to past, present, and future hobby, but the reality is that the time has past come.

On the flip-side, there’s also how identifying yourself as a writer is perceived by others. Again from O’Mara:

After a series of similar rejections, and a few Centrelink training seminars, I excluded my creative writing university credentials from my CV. In my experience, most employers don’t take kindly to arts degrees. I learned that being a writer meant I often had to hide being a writer. Wait, let me rephrase that—I had to ‘repackage’ my skills for the dynamic, innovative and street-smart workplaces of the new millennium. It seemed odd that all my friends, family and teachers encouraged me to write and to devote so much of my study to creative writing through high school and university, and yet suddenly I was on my arse without a job and being told I was just ‘another arts graduate’ who needed a crash course in reality.

And later,

… [for] many of my workmates, writing made no sense. It was a waste of time in a world of priorities, spread sheets, smart phones and late-night work meetings because socialising was just easier with workmates, key stakeholders and potential funding bodies. The worst thing was the perception that writing was a sign that you just needed to work out ‘some emotional issues’.

Do things get clearer as your career progresses? Not always. In an interview in our March issue (Vol 69/1), Steven Amsterdam admitted that he still puts down ‘nurse’ when filling out forms, despite his huge success (winning the Age Book of the Year in 2009, making it onto the VCE reading list for 2011, popular and critical acclaim and so on). Although he did also stress that this had a lot to with not wanting to put too much pressure on himself as well.

Added onto this is the curious role that funding bodies have to play on how we conceptualise being a writer. Browsing the various grant categories online for the first time, I wondered whether I was a ‘new’, ‘emerging’ or ‘developing’ writer. When would I get to be an ‘established’ one? The answer, according to the website, was based on the number of publications – ten short stories, at least three novels, a ‘body of work’. I can certainly see the point of dividing from an organisational point of view – it doesn’t make sense to pit experienced writers against those just starting out, particularly when competition is already so high. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but feel like I was trying to emerge through various stages of the administrative chrysalis as I checked and unchecked boxes.

Justine Larbalestrier has tried to make a distinction based on ‘writer as career’ versus ‘writer as identity’. Basically:

When I’m talking about writer as identity I (try to remember to) use the term “writer.” When I’m talking writer as career I (try to remember to) use the term “author” or “novelist.”

I have been a writer since I first learned how as a small child. I have been an author since I sold my first novel. There was a thirty year gap between the two. During the time that I was a writer-not-an-author I wrote hundreds of poems and short stories, and beginnings of novels, and two novels. That writing was a huge part of who I was. When I didn’t write I was miserable. When I was writing a lot I was joyous.

 

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