The Importance of Being Paid

A green breakfast for Saint Patrick's Day: Guacamole and avocado sandwich, strawberries and a golden beet so sweet I ate it raw. 

Last year, I was fired. After having worked over a decade for the same publication, I was let go without warning and overnight, because I refused to work without a raise or some kind of health insurance. In retrospect, being sacked was a good thing, but at the time of course it was a blow. After the initial shock when I realized that I had lost my income, came the more lingering scare when I thought I might have lost my Self. When your job and your Self are pretty much the same thing – which is my case – then losing one tends to make you believe you’ve lost the other as well. And though I momentarily lost my footing (along with my income) when I lost my job as a writer, I did realize that the writer in me would continue to thrive regardless. Coming to that understanding was very important to me.

The act of firing me was designed to cut me down and put me in my place. It was one of those times in life, when another person aims to destroy for the sheer act of destroying. It was calculated to hurt, which it also did to a degree. However, the good news about this sort of thing is that it makes for the perfect time to “shine”, or, as Anita Brookner writes: “This is when character tells”.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. What began as some sort of self-soothing when I was very young, quickly became a way of life. I studied, I read, and I wrote. Endlessly. Not a day goes by without me writing. In fact, I cannot imagine life without writing. A couple of hours of writing and reading early in the morning make the drudgery of housework, cooking, cleaning and so on, bearable. I was 10 when I first got paid for an article, which was published in Kamratposten, a popular Swedish children’s magazine. The payment came in the mail in the shape of a giant teddy bear. I’ve been a bit of a professional ever since. And I’ve never written for free.

Not everybody can write. Not everybody can sing, or paint, or dance, or act. Or play an instrument. Yet, many people tend to think so. They seem to think that such skills are so slight that you should perform them for free. Or without health insurance. Or without an annual raise. Just for the fun of it. Nobody would think of paying a dentist for a root canal with a fruit basket, yet musician friends of mine tell me they’ve sometimes been paid this way. Nobody would dream of saying to their lawyer:
“Well, you know, you got a whole lot of exposure out there in court today, buddy boy. That’s your payment.”

Yet actor friends of mine are expected to live on exactly such kind of “exposure” when they act in plays or films. As if just about anyone can act. My former boss told me he had a number of applicants who were willing to write for free, a byline in ink was all they asked for. As if just about anyone can write.

This is blatant disrespect.

I refuse to fall for the threat that “there are people willing to write for free”. Unfortunately, as long as there are people who do work “for free”, or without health insurance, or without proper pay even, creative jobs will be viewed as lesser than others, and creative talents will go unnoticed or will not be encouraged. I don't need to tell you how that will affect the future of the arts, do I?

I am not saying artists or creative people should make fortunes (although with all due respect I can’t see why the people on Wall Street should and artists shouldn’t), I am merely saying that these jobs should make it possible to put food on the table and roof over one’s head.

If you’re in a creative field, I ask you to join me in doing the same. Don’t give your texts, images, songs, music, or dance choreography away for free, unless you want to conduct charity.

And if you’re not in a creative field, I ask you think about things that have touched you: Someone’s music or dance, a photograph, a painting, or something someone wrote. Years and years of training and hard work is behind all of it. It doesn’t come effortlessly. It’s art, and not everyone can do it. I think many of us are being fooled by media and messages like “Get a ballerina’s body in time for summer”, “You too can write a novel” and “Learn to play the piano in 8 weeks”. We have to understand, really understand, that this is not the case. Ask any dancer, and she or he will tell you. You don’t get legs like that in a couple of months, or even a year. It takes years of dedication, hours of sweat and of hard work, but there’s also an emotional component to it. The art of dancing. Ask any author about the possibility of writing a novel just like that. Ask any pianist who’s been crying over scales and arpeggios since childhood, and he or she will tell you: It takes work and dedication. It takes years. And this must be rewarded. It must come with proper payment.