The Question Every Writer Is Asked: What’s Your Real Job?
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At Christmas last year, I was talking to my eleven-year-old niece about what she wanted to be when she grew up.
“An author,” she said. I threw my arms around her, mostly in solidarity but a little in sympathy since I knew what she was in for. A bit of success but more often than not a lot of struggle.
In January, just over a month later, at my sister’s birthday party, my niece and I were having the same conversation with my twelve-year-old nephew. “You can get paid to play Fortnite, you know,” he told me. There was a tournament being held at the Australian Open that weekend with half a million dollars in prizemoney available.
“But what will your other job be?” I asked. He looked at me blankly. “Getting paid to play Fortnite is a pretty sweet gig so there will be lots of people who want that job. But not everyone can get paid to play Fortnite so you’ll probably need another job,” I explained. He couldn’t come up with anything else and that’s okay because he’s twelve.
I was very careful to ask the question that way – “What will your other job be?” – because almost every writer – and even Fortnite players trying to make a career out of it – knows they will need another job and almost every writer, upon responding to the question of “What do you do?” by saying they’re a writer, has been asked, “What’s your real job?”
It’s not just writers without a profile who are subjected to this. Clementine Ford, a reasonably well-known Australian writer, recently announced that she would no longer be writing columns for Fairfax newspapers (her decision) and conservative media responded by calling her “unemployed”. The fact that she’d never been employed by Fairfax in the first place – because she was and still is a freelancer – didn’t seem important to them. Neither did the fact that her columns will now be appearing in other media outlets. Or that she’s the author of two bestselling books, Fight Like a Girl and Boys Will Be Boys. Apparently, if it isn’t a permanent role with a salary, superannuation and sick leave, even if it does earn you money, then they think it isn’t worthy of being called a job.
For the past eighteen months, I’ve been working an administration role during the day, doing freelance editing work during the evenings and trying to write in the very little spare time I have. When I started that administration role, I made a very clear choice not to add it to my LinkedIn profile or change my description, which reads, “Blogger, Writer and Editor.” Writing and editing are my career. They have been for a long time – more than fifteen years – and that includes permanent roles, temporary roles, freelance roles and my own unpaid writing work (mostly permanent roles actually, ten of those fifteen years). Administration is just what I’m doing now to pay the bills and save up enough money to write full-time again.
This, I have decided, will be my new normal. I don’t want a permanent role, writing, editing or otherwise. I want to choose what to write and edit. But I still need to be able to support myself. So I will work a job I don’t give two hoots about for as long as I need to reach a certain savings goal (or for as long as I can stand it without wanting to kill all my co-workers). And then I will go back to writing full-time for as long as I can (until the money runs out). And then I will do it all again.
It’s not a perfect solution. (In fact, it’s one that worries my family – what if I run out of money, can’t get another job, have to sell my still-mortgaged house and subsequently move in with one of them? None of us wants that.) But this is the compromise deal I’ve made with myself. I live an unsatisfactory life for a couple of years so I can live a happy one for a couple of years afterwards.
And in those couple of happy years, when I’m asked what my real job is, I will only be able to say I’m a writer. Just a writer. Nothing more, nothing less, no back-up answer, no socially acceptable alternative. And anyone who doesn’t like it can go get a real job.
