words by Chloe Milne
Every time I meet new people, I dread that inevitable first question: “So, what do you do?” (I wish it was replaced with “Can I get you another drink?”, but that only happens in my dreams). I always pause awkwardly, as if the subject of my job is some kind of dark secret. I often doubt that people I’ve just met even care what I do for a living when they ask. It’s just the polite thing to ask, isn’t it? A way for us to categorise our acquaintances into organised little boxes. I have long envied people who can fit neatly into those boxes with their respectable, easily digestible job titles. Doctor. Builder. Accountant. Recruiter (although I still don’t really get that one). They can answer with their one-word job title and boom, everyone’s satisfied.
Writer. I want to say writer. I really do, because that’s what I categorise myself as in my head, but I hesitate. It’s as if confessing to being a writer automatically paints a question mark on the ‘job’ box. I see the cogs whirring in the asker’s brain.
“Oh, like for the BBC? Or fiction? Have you published a bestseller?”
I laugh and exclaim “I wish!” every time, hoping that will satisfy them. It never does. I see pity flood their eyes.
“Oh right… So what’s your real job?”
That dreaded phrase is one that I’ve heard a million times. It’s exhausting, isn’t it? Why is it that having a creative job is always questioned and sneered at pityingly? Is it not a real job? Why is it that I can see people’s eyes roll as soon as they hear the word ‘writer’?
I hold a few theories as to why people react so disparagingly to my admittance:
1. Unlike traditional employment paths, being a creative writer is an infamously unstable career; people just don’t get why I’d put myself through that!
2. They don’t know how passionate I am. Writing is fuelled solely by passion. To write for a living, you have to love it, particularly if it’s fiction because you will be knocked down so many times. It isn’t done out of a desire for success, but for love of the craft.
3. You have to motivate yourself. There’s no boss telling you to get a move on when your dream is to publish a fiction book. As a perfectionist AND a chronic procrastinator, I can see why people are doubtful of me on this one.
But there’s another sly reason that is usually nervously laughed off when I mention it.
4. I’m a woman.
Sure, maybe people dislike it when I call myself a writer because you have to earn that title – and I don’t have a million pound book deal. However, I’ve written for many publications and I am consistently working on fiction. So what would then classify me as a real writer? The truth is that anyone who writes in any capacity can call themselves a writer. The difference between a writer and someone who enjoys writing in their spare time lies only in how the individual defines it, in their confidence.
When a stranger’s eyes narrow condescendingly upon hearing my job title, I don’t think it has anything to do with my credentials. I think it comes back to people being scornful of confident women.
(I know, I know, not everything is about gender, Chloe! But trust me – this one is.)
Since women first started writing, they have faced extreme scrutiny. The Brontë sisters are some of the most well-known female authors who used male aliases to publish their work, and those books gained notably more recognition and praise than titles published with their own names. Charlotte herself addressed the issue in her introduction to the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights in a text titled “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell”:
“We did not like to declare ourselves women, because – without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called ‘feminine’ – we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice.”
She was right in 1850, and continues to be so today. That is clear by the amount of female authors who write under male pseudonyms, as well as those who feel they must be humble about their successes. Playwright debbie tucker green (who writes her name deliberately in lowercase letters) has won an Olivier award and written multiple plays for the West End, yet she still fears that if she runs out of ideas, she’ll “just have to get [her]self a proper job”¹.
There is statistical proof of prejudice against female writers too. In 2018, Weinburg and Kapelner² discovered that books written by female authors were priced an average of $18 less than those of the same genre written by male counterparts. So no, I don’t think I’m being dramatic when I say the world thinks less of female writers than male writers. Of course, you could argue the world thinks less of women in any profession, but that’s a bigger conversation.
The systematic annihilation of women in the literary field is shocking, and certainly plays a large role as to why strangers seem incredulous when a woman tells them that she’s a writer. It infuriates me that arts specifically overlook women, since creative subjects have been dismissed for years for being too ‘girly’. 70% of English Literature degrees in the UK go to women³, but it is universally recognised as a ‘joke degree’, with minimal relevant career prospects. Women for ages have been muses of poetry but never the canonical poet themselves. How depressing is it that even in subjects that are critiqued for being too feminine, men are more successful? Seven out of the ten Booker prize winners in the past decade have been men. If women writers are dominating the bookshelves, why aren't they dominating prize lists in the same way?
Imagine if we questioned everyone else’s career choices as disparagingly as we do to female writers: “Oh you’re a lawyer? So you just sit at home making up laws all day? Have you worked on any cases I’ll have heard of? Does that even pay well? Do you really think you can make a career out of that?” Somehow those questions sound ridiculous in the context of a traditionally well accepted job, but as a society we have normalised the scrutiny over who is allowed to call themselves a writer.
Perhaps people think I am showing off because I work three jobs and I’m choosing the most ‘impressive’ one to name my career. Perhaps it’s because being an author is seen as a prestigious role, something that you have to earn. Perhaps it’s because an author’s connotations of fame and wealth can only possibly belong to men.
Women have to work so much harder to get the same praise that men do, so it leaves a bad taste in their mouths when we claim our own title rather than waiting meekly for a label that may never come. As a woman who has written this piece, I will sign off by answering the question I first asked:
I am a writer.