Optimism and Desperation

Virginia Woolf and Barbara Comyns

I often fantasise about being an author in a different era, that in the 30s, or 50s or 70s I would be able to make a living from writing (I don’t, even including the economic paraphernalia of being an author: going to festivals, freelance editing, writing reviews, giving workshops, judging contests) but two things I have read recently had put rest to my daydreams: things are pretty much the same as they were in the 20th century. I have been sporadically going through the colossal selections of Virginia Woolf’s essays and other non-fiction. Trying to get into writing criticism, she is a good role model. She can write equally well on moths and beetles as she can Jane Eyre. In one volume of her collected essays (6) I found a curious typescript of a radio interview in which her and Leonard Woolf, who she ran Hogarth Press with, discuss the state of publishing, "Are Too Many Books Written and Published?. Leonard expresses his dismay at the state of publishing in their time, which is nearly identical to the problems we face now.

“Your best-seller indeed, has a good deal to answer for; indirectly he produces a flooding of the market.. Everyone is trying to write a book which will be enormously and immediately popular.. The best-seller has a bad effect upon publishers. The publisher perhaps rakes in a huge profit from a novel that has sold by the hundred thousand. Out of the proceeds he is tempted to finance several other books of inferior merit for the chance they too may prove to be bestsellers. But nothing is more difficult than to spot a best-seller before publication.”

You can see this, in the imitations of a writer like Sally Rooney or Gillian Flynn who speak to a moment or do something fresh, the market flooded with pseudo Sally Rooney’s and Gillian Flynn’s which have been given enormous advances while normal advances are at their highest, enough to live off modestly for a year ( I am not at a level yet to get one of these) and advances are spread into different deposits over the timespan of a production, publication and life of a book.( ie, handing in manuscript, publication, paperback publication..)

“The overproduction of. books has a disastrous consequence from an economic point of view. Only a very few writers of books earn a living wage… if it weren’t for the vanity of writers and the optimism of publishers, there would have been a General Strike of novelists years ago… a large number of writers are simply blacklegs, that is to say are ready to take a wage which is not a living wage; indeed dozens of them are so anxious to be published that they will pay for the privilege.”

However, Virginia Woolf, is surprisingly, more optimistic and excited by the prospect of the market being oversaturated, the human population increasing.

You say that too many people write. I say, on the contrary, not enough people write, but the people who write write too many books.”

She also notes that in the 18th century, writing books was privilege of the middle classes, and that working people thought it above them. “We are catching a much wider net, and should bring much bigger fish to shore.”

We have more diverse stories being told and published now, more than ever, which is very exciting, I am sure Virginia Woolf would love to explore and read it all as much as I love finding new books and writers, from those traditionally published to weird tracts self- published on amazon.The reality of that, is we can’t all make a living from writing. It isn’t economically possible.

Woolf, saying “I deplore the fact I am catered for almost wholly by professional writers,” thinks people should write one or two books instead of thirty, which would give everyone a chance to publish (and read). People of all professions, not just the scholarly famous or intensely literary. She wants stories by tramps and duchesses; by plumbers and Prime Ministers.”

I agree but it also grates with the vainglorious and foolish fact I have dedicated my life to literature to the detriment of a lot of other aspects of my life, have tried to make a career out of it, that it is a spiritual calling, that I have an immense desire to read and write dozens of stories and books, but a day doesn’t go by when I wish I had divided up my life a little better, pursued a fulfilling different career to provide stability and left writing as an enormously fun hobby which occasionally gives me an extra income. It’s frankly not fun when you desperately need money owed for writing.Because I don’t come from a background like Virginia Woolf. Instead, I worked minimum wage jobs, fantasising about the day I could throw the towel in because my writing paid off. Sure I would have written less, in fact I always write less in my minimum wage jobs-I don’t think Woolf appreciates the exhaustion of being on your feet 8 hours, cooking supper, having interpersonal relations, children and a house to clean then sitting down to write and write well(which obviously takes a lot of reading, editing practice) but after attempting to go “full time” for a period for various complicated personal reasons not only having to do with the desire to write full time, I am struggling to finish literary projects at the moment because I am so anxious about money and stability. I spend a lot of my time on temp work apps, getting gigs to catsit. I eat a lot of boiled eggs. I don’t go out much, I owe money. I would rather the 8 hour bone-tiredness than dread induced nausea and insomnia thinking about freelance payments. I need to retrain, in a more long time and sustainable job, and I don’t know where to begin. “I am a writer because I am basically unemployable,” said my beloved Angela Carter. Her father bought her a house. Thanks Angela.

I am in the bad deep end now. A few weeks ago, I was rejected from a part-time job at Lidl. ( I have learned, from my obsession with reading Soviet history books, the best place to work in hard times is a grocery shop) I find myself struggling to find the jobs I always relied on to support my Art as I get older (I could rant for hours of the effect of bartending on the joints) and the market increasingly difficult, the gaps in my CV from residencies and grants which are just as appealing to an employer as a period spent in prison( and they know and I know I might quit if I get money or success, a residency and time) the wage from such jobs not enough to live on these days anyway, though if you have read my books, you can also see that those jobs were a source of inspiration, not just economic necessities that are quickly forgotten. They form my being because they take up hours of my life. There is the curse of writers just writing about writer’s and writer’s workshops.

I remember at college meeting a young woman in medical school who wanted to be a novelist. Her plan was to set up a practice, and write in her spare time, her stories no doubt, inspired by her work. Looking back, she was the smart one, not me, with my give yourself to literature- 100- percent- and -literature- will -sort -you out youthful naivety. I don’t remember her name, or how it turned out for her however. Sometimes I imagine her, sitting in her doctor’s office after hours, writing luminous stories about bones and hearts. Or maybe she is too tired, has kids, has decided to wait till retirement to write.

There is also a discomfort for someone in my position which is, your face will be in the newspaper the same day you are working in a customer facing job. Most people don’t care, which is ideal, and sometimes it can add a step to your day to be recognised, but other times you can be in a position where you are made to feel unsafe, having to be multiple people at once: the server (or doctor) the writer, the person and those with an intimate grasp of your writing may assume an intimate grasp of your person, while you are in the inescapable space of a day job. A few years ago, a photo went around of an actor who had been in some well known TV shows, working as a cashier at trader joe’s. Thats what it is like being in the arts, without a private income. money comes and goes. You quit gigs when you have opportunities, you fall back on them. You are somebody and nobody, a success and a failure at the same time. it’s tiring.

Virginia Woolf of course, had a private income, and in a sense expected other people to continue in their perhaps exhausting professions while also writing books. I think an enormous problem in publishing today, and very well in her time, is authors with private incomes, and other systems of support not owning up to it, and parading as a full time author who lives off their creative writing when they don’t make any more from it than me and all of us other non-bestsellers. This image they project is dangerous to people like me. Growing up outside the literary world and without knowledge of its cogs and wheels, they gave me a false confidence that I could live off my writing, which only a minority of writers can do, and I would hate to do that to anyone else, because it is ruinous. Tell everyone about your day job, tell everyone about living off the proceeds of Great Grandfather George’s tinned asparagus empire.It doesn’t make you a better or worse writer.

I also blame it on a career quiz I did in middle school, on a bulky old computer. I knew I wanted to write- I wore sweater vests and carried around my copy of Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot, ( which was my introduction to literary fiction, to something a bit more grown up, I still think it is a great literary novella ) and the quiz said as such, but, rather cruelly, listed a writers income as 30,000 grand per year, which even with todays inflation, is nowhere near what I and other authors earn. A lot of its culture and opportunities, festivals and prizes especially, rely on the time and presence of an author, to do events, interviews, things which if you work as well as write, eat into your actual writing time. When you are longlisted for a prize, you have to keep particular events dates free in advance in your diary, which you will have to attend if shortlisted. So, you book those days off from the cafe where you work. Heck, thats’ more than worth it, you think, I could win a year’s income and attend a fabulous party. A month later, you find out you haven’t been shortlisted, and those two days of work have been snatched up by someone else. In other jobs, it might eat into your holiday hours which would otherwise be spent with friends or family. It’s a gamble, for which there is no solution.

I remember a high school teacher once saying, think of all the novels and paintings and other creative works lost, unmade because of the death toll of young men in World War 1. One could think too, of all the novels and paintings and other creative works lost because of the unequal distribution of wealth and a lack of universal basic income, a shorter work week , or a system where everyone, not just teachers and professors, could take sabbaticals- a sort of maternity leave for creativity, jobs that work around employee’s creative practices, more library funding so libraries can employ writers and also stay open longer so people have somewhere to write( As I am typing this, the announcement is being made the library will close soon, at 5 pm.)

Last month, a biography of one of my favourite writers, Barbara Comyns ( Savage Innocence by Avril Horner) was published by Manchester University Press. Barbara Comyns was a few generations younger than Virginia Woolf, and unlike Woolf, did not have a private income to support herself as a visual artist and writer, though she was of a similar class. If you have hunted down and read all of her novels, as I have, you will experience a feeling of déjà vu reading her biography, the same incidents and sinister men pop up: her life was a clear inspiration for her art. She began to write later in life, after going to art school with ambitions to be as sculptor, a disastrous marriage to a fellow artist during the surrealism of the 30s, children and multiple jobs from housekeeper to dog breeder. She did not cross paths with Virginia Woolf, but she did with Vanessa Bell, they even had art pieces in the same exhibition in 1934. Publishing never gave Comyns great material success (though she had many good reviews- the mythologizing of Comyns as an outsider artist- a term I don’t like anyway, is untrue. Graham Greene was a fan of her work. She was friends with Dylan Thomas who once peed in her bathtub. She read Dostoevsky.) and this caused her great despair because she needed the money which isn’t a thing to feel shame about. It is, I think, also painful when you have transmuted your hardships into art and it doesn’t help you that much, when morally it feels it should, however illogical . Over the years since her death, her stories have become loved by many people like me, in part because we can relate to the hard experiences and rejoice at her ability to turn them into something poetic, surreal and funny, but that continuing, posthumous love and legacy only means something to her readers and Barbara’s family, not Barbara herself, who passed away in 1992.

Writer’s biographies are great for writers to read, because it is a how to guide. How to live, how to turn your life into art, what to read, how to not feel like shit when you get a bad review etc, particularly if you didn’t grow up with a connection to writers and publishing. Barbara Comyns, like me, was often in the deep end.

The most painful parts of the biography are the letters she sent in financial and emotional desperation, especially to the father of her second child, the art critic Rupert Lee, and Rupert Lee’s wife who had money.

“I am leaving here mid-day, I have nowhere to go as you know so I suppose I should go to the workhouse but I can’t do that so I shall go to the Eiffel Tower.”

There is an adage that you should always go for a walk or do something else before writing an angry email or letter, but that is hard to stick to if you are hungry or at risk of becoming homeless, especially with children. She had, like me, and probably many others, moments where she said she would never publish a book again, but did indeed in the end. I read the biography greedily, but with a profound sadness, having to take breaks when it was too familiar, not just to her work but my life too. A few of her books remain out of print, while some like my favourite A Touch of Mistletoe have been recently reissued. She wrote 11 novels, and I am glad she didn't write just one, and I do wish she wrote 30. I think a wonderful place to start with her is The Vet’s Daughter which has a kitchen sink magic realism to it. The most touching surprise of Savage Innocence was that Barbara Comyns and Leonora Carrington were friends when Carrington was still in London studying. They went to art exhibitions together, and I can’t imagine conversations I would want to overhear more.