(*from the song “Everything Is Free” by Gillian Welch)
When I was a young man, I dreamt of growing up to be a struggling writer. Raised on a diet of Jack Kerouac, James Kelman, Richard Brautigan and Bob Dylan, I pictured myself in a series of one-room dives, scrapping away in short-time jobs while I hammered out under-appreciated masterpieces on a rattling typewriter which would be the only possession I hung on to as I rolled from town to town keeping one step ahead of landlords and creditors and, possibly, women who wanted to make me settle down. My books would be published, just, but would sell in pitiful quantities and make little or no money. I would probably flirt with alcoholism, but my dedication to the craft of writing would win out; I would be unable to afford a drug habit; my appearance would be unkempt at best.
We all have our dreams.
So I never thought that writing would be a way of making a living. I always assumed that, even if I were to have work published, and appreciated, and recognised and thought about and responded to, it wouldn’t pay the bills. In the more extreme version of my struggling writer dream, I wasn’t even going to have any bills. I was going to be too busy ramblin’ from town to town, walking the earth, meeting people and getting into adventures. (You know, like Kane in Kung Fu. Although in hindsight I’m not sure what I thought I was going to eat, or how I was going to buy new ribbons for that typewriter.) The less extreme version had me doing just enough work, in mindless and non-aspirational jobs, to keep me ticking over while I wrote. And for a few years, between leaving university and having my first novel published, that’s what I did; working in factories and bakeries and post-rooms and call-centres and restaurant kitchens for two or three nights a week, trying to keep stories ticking over in my head until I could get back to the desk. On one memorable occasion, the day before I had my first meeting with a London literary agent, a meeting to which I went wearing shoes so cheap they made my feet bleed all the way home from Knightsbridge, I had a job handing out flyers for a new pound shop in Barnsley, dressed as a bear, being humorously assaulted by local youths.
And it was all right; it worked. I grumbled about not having enough writing time, or enough money, and it wasn’t always easy finding the right balance between work and non-work. It was frustrating, at times. But I was never hungry, and I got my work done, my first novel written and accepted for publication, and I was all set to do the same thing again, with maybe a bit of extra favourable-review wind in my sails.
But things changed.
I sold more books than I expected to. I sold more books, clearly, than my publisher expected me to. I was invited to literary festivals, and readings, and other events, and was paid for going to them. I was sent hardback books in the post, for free, just as I began to be able to afford them. I was able – although bear in mind that I wasn’t living in London, and that my tastes are mostly inexpensive – to give up the day jobs I’d accumulated, and to write full-time. I still do, six years later. Writing pays my bills. My appearance is about as kempt as it’s ever going to be. I could afford both a drug habit and a pitiful descent into alcoholism, if I chose. I have no need to ramble from town to town. I’m a writer, and I’m not struggling.
It’s not what I was expecting, and it surprises me still.
Because really, why should I make a living from writing? From sitting around all day, making up stories? The obvious answer is that someone is making money from my books – the printers, the publishers, the booksellers – so of course I should do so as well. But that money is only there because individuals are paying for individual copies of my books, in such quantities as to make the whole book production and distribution process worthwhile. And you don’t have to be an economist to think that maybe that’s a model which isn’t going to last forever; especially when publishers seem to be in the insane position of actively promoting the destroyer gene which is the e-book. (One publisher told me recently that once e-books take off there will be no need to worry about piracy as “the technical people have worked out a way of encrypting them so they can’t be copied”. Good lord. Go ahead, get your head in that nice warm sand. It’s all right, you’ll be safe in there. There’s nothing to be afraid of.)
If e-books take off – and at the moment it doesn’t look as if the book-reading public are at all interested, but that’s not stopping the publishers and booksellers from foisting the things upon us – it’ll be a matter of minutes before file-sharers and pirates undermine the current financial model and do to writers what they’ve already done to musicians. Which means that my struggling writer dream will probably come true all over again, only this time it’ll be with children to feed.
But that’s okay. I’ll still write, and so will all the others. As the American folk-singer Gillian Welch sang back in 2001:
“Everything is free now, that’s what they say.
Everything I’ve ever done, going to give it away.
Someone hit the big score, they figured it out:
That we’re going to do it anyway, even if it doesn’t pay.”
And who said writing was a sensible way of making a living anyway? What, in real terms, do writers contribute to the economy? When the cheap oil runs out and we start planting trees and keeping chickens to get by, my rejection of excess adjective isn’t going to keep the cooking fire alight, nor will my astute use of prolepsis keep the wolves at
Writers, and artists generally, have always relied on patronage of some form. Historically, that patronage took the form either of wealthy individuals supporting a writer, or more often of the writer already coming from a wealthy background. In our modern industrialised and leisure-rich era that patronage has come from the success of books as a mass commodity, with each book-buyer in effect being a mini-patron. But once people no longer need to buy books, that support system will fail, and writers will have to find new ways of earning a living. Some will find patronage within the great pyramid schemes of creative writing courses; some will make a success of live performance; some will get the hang of grant applications (patronage via the state), or fellowships (patronage via philanthrocapitalists); some will team up with talented designers and printers to make their books objects of physical beauty which can command high prices and never be pirated; others will dress up in bear costumes and hand out flyers for the new pound shops of Barnsley.
One consequence of this new writing-for-love-not-money world could well be that fewer representative voices will emerge, as once again those with money behind them are enabled to take artistic risks in the absence of income. In much the same way as the work experience system ensures that our powerful media institutions continue to be staffed by the established middle classes – since who else could afford to do unpaid work in central London for months at a time? – the loss of royalty income for writers will threaten to push out marginal and unmoneyed voices. Which is why those of us who care about good writing should continue to seek it out, and to make sure that we’re paying for it, whether that be in small magazines, at performance events, or even in bookshops while they last. And those of us who are doing the writing should continue to insist on being paid a fair price for our work, not only for the sake of our own livelihoods but for the sake of those writers who are just starting out and deserve to be valued as professionals.
And between us all – the readers who care about good writing and the writers who are trying their hardest to create it – we need to keep a secret from all the e-book enthusiasts, file-sharing pirates, and anti-copyright libertarians. The secret is this: that no matter what happens, all of us (except those who shouldn’t have been doing it in the first place, and there will be plenty of those) will keep writing. Because we never started writing for the money. We wrote – we write – because we thought we had something to say. Because we wanted to make a connection with people we would never be likely to meet. Because we wanted our stories to be recognised, and thought about, and responded to. Because we love all the great stories we’ve read, and we want to keep trying to do something the same. Because we love what language can do, and we love finding new ways of doing it. And we’re going to do it anyway, even if it doesn’t pay.
This article originally appeared in issue 12 of PenPusher magazine.
