On Becoming a Writer

Last night I went to a panel discussion on The Age of Ladyblogs at Housingworks Bookstore, featuring an amazing set of women: Yesha Callahan (Clutch), Jessica Coen (Jezebel), Kate Harding (Shapely Prose), Anna Holmes (Jezebel), Lori Leibovich (HuffPo Women), Samhita Mukhopadhyay (Feministing), Amelia McDonnell-Parry (The Frisky), and Edith Zimmerman (The Hairpin). It was a really fascinating event and so many wonderful things were discussed! But I want to focus in on one thing that stuck with me the whole subway ride home.

At one point during the Q&A, a young woman stood up and identified herself as a fresh transplant from the midwest with no contacts who constantly finds herself writing for free. She wanted to know how they made the jump from someone with no audience to being a successful lady writer, and if they had any advice for young female writers just starting out. As a fellow young female writer who feels constantly clueless as to how one “makes it” as a writer, I perked up a bit in my seat. I’m halfway through the Artist’s Way, so I thought to myself, “this could be the moment when it all makes sense.” My inner suspense was abruptly broken, however, by the middle aged woman sitting next to me who immediately started laying the snark upon this young hopeful to her friend sitting next to her. With one ear trying to pay attention to the answers starting to come from the women on stage and the other mesmerized by the disdain dripping out of my neighbor’s mouth for such an idiotic question, I caught charming snippets such as “Well you don’t stand up in front of everyone and ask questions like that,” “No one cares,” and “I never had to work for free.” while her friend responded with an emphatic “mhmm,” “I know,” and “who would do that?”

I felt my insides starting to squirm the way they do when I hear something infuriating, and was two seconds away from wishing I had something really snappy to say back to her to make her shut up (she was distracting me from the answer to my problems, after all). But then one of the first things said was from Anna Holmes, who admitted she didn’t know what advice to give because she had never written for free. Amelia McDonell-Parry just shouted “Email me! I will never not pay for original work.” And got nods of agreement from the other women that their sites are always looking for fresh voices, go out and stalk us with submissions! Is this really all the world had for me? The answer to “How do I get paid to write what I love writing about?” is… don’t write for free? Well duh! If I could easily just do that then I wouldn’t have that question! Is no one listening?? Only Edith Zimmerman had anything different to add. One of the younger of the crowd, and most silent throughout the night, she leaned into her microphone and paused a while before admitting, “I am a big advocate of writing for free…if you care about it.” Find that one website you’re dying to have a piece on, find that one thing you just go crazy about and just can’t stop working on like anything else in your life, and write the shit out of it. Have the terrible job that pays the bills if you have to but write the hell out of what you love.

It highlighted the major gap I often feel between me and the people I look up to, and a lack of awareness that people seem to have regarding young people these days. I’m not an economist, so I won’t pretend like I know all of the reasons why millennials (if all of the obnoxious trend pieces are true) are an entire intern class forgoing full-time work to be part-bloggers, part-Etsy store owner, part-freelancer, part-startup founders, and part-hookup havers, even though they’re all in debt. BUT one cannot deny that today is an interesting (and rough) age to try and enter the job market as a young person. So when I see these women clutching their pearls and exclaiming to the writing gods why on earth anyone would write for free, I want to yell at them BECAUSE THIS IS THE JOB MARKET WE’VE BEEN BORN INTO!

Remember Occupy Wall St? That’s the year I had to find my first post-grad job. This is the age of “required” experience in the hell that is unpaid internships, “Entry-level” jobs that require a Master’s degree, and 50% unemployment in my age bracket. It’s fucked up, but what other option do we have? Especially when we’re drawn to the work by a passion for something greater than ourselves. Despite your claims that “fresh voices are always needed!” … there aren’t many lucrative places to put feminist writing. The majority of feminist websites are blogs, which means zero money. Hell, even at Feministing, the most successful feminist activist blog, the editors all have their own full time jobs. And you can complain that interns are privileged snots all you want but everyone I know over the past few years to have an internship, myself included, has taken up a second job that pays their rent, pays the bills, buys groceries, all so that they can do more interesting work that they want to get ahead in. Do you realize how entitled you sound as a writer to scoff at a $20 per post payment when so many of us would jump on an opportunity like that?

It might be easy for you to say as the successful business woman that you are that we are stupid and naive, but maybe you just don’t remember that business savvy isn’t instinctive. Women aren’t taught how to bargain, how to network, we don’t ask what we’re worth, and even writing is still a boys club. And not everyone who realizes that writing is their calling had the chance to study it formally in college or get a masters in journalism. Some of our interests lie in women’s studies, history, sociology – majors that force you to write and write but teach you nothing about the editorial process or how to market yourself. Some of us don’t even go to college! And we’re a generation of women conditioned to think that unpaid work is our way of paying dues to the industry, the rite of passage that gets you “experience,” that gets you “out there.” Because why would someone give into our entitled demands of payment when there is an overflow of other fresh faces willing to give it out for free in order to get that one more piece of experience they need?

There’s such a huge disconnect between the young people starting out and those who are in the perfect position to be mentors and guides of industry. We need more formal nurturing in female writing communities. Many “lady blog” communities are obviously full of support, cross-posting, and great discussion, but what we need are mentors. We need more panels, more opportunities to meet our idols, and we want your stories. When we want to know “how did you do it?” we actually want to know what happened! We want to hear the story of how you made the jump. And when you hear a young aspiring female writer FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T SCOFF AND SNEER AT HER! HELP HER! We are lost and confused and if it made sense we wouldn’t be standing up in the middle of a crowded room making a desperate plea for advice.