A Coven of Black Leather Jackets
I am a fantasy writer, and I know this because I own a black leather jacket.
Every profession has its own uniforms. Soldiers were khaki, police wear blue and black, doctors wear white, techies wear steelies and writers are no exception.
Romantic novelists, according to my Mum, wear skirts and floral-pattern silk scarves and don’t tend to have such good parties as the crime novelists. Thriller writers incline more towards the blue jeans-and-shirt end of the spectrum and, I am finding out, fantasy and science fiction writers wear black leather jackets. And either have very big hair indeed, or almost no hair at all. (I’m afraid I fall into the big hair category. My hair doesn’t have to be long to be big; there are strange and repellent electromagnetic forces at work somewhere in all this lot.)
What most fantasy writers aren’t, it turns out, are female or under 35. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are some fantastic female science fiction and SF writers out there – figures like Ursula le Guin or Anne McCaffrey spring immediately to mind – but the industry is largely dominated by blokes. I was surprised to find myself the only female and under-35 attendee of an SF event a few weeks ago, and even more surprised to discover that while I stood out like an iceberg in the Sahara, at least I had, as if by magical instinct, brought my black leather jacket. Perhaps it’s a genetic condition – all those who are born with the disposition to write fantasy/SF are also immediately destined to be the owner of the obligatory coat, without needing to be told. In much the same way it seems all people are born knowing the chorus of ‘We All Live in a Yellow Submarine’ but not the verses.
It’s a curious thing, being an unlikely candidate for membership of the black-leather-coat-coven. Writers are generally a grouchy bunch anyway, since while you may talk to your peers in merry and jovial tones of monsters you have written and rights you have sold, the thought is always lurking at the back of your mind… you’re the bastard who nabbed my shelf space…
Remarkably, it’s even possible that writers hate writers more than they hate publishers, which is an achievement since no matter how successful you are as a writer, and how well you’re published, the second you get a single editorial note from your publishing house the certain and irrevocable realisation dawns upon you that actually, your editor is a philistine nit who can’t understand the brilliance of your life’s work. And if you happen not to be no.1 in the bestseller charts right here, right now, then it has nothing to do with the words you’ve written… it’s because the publisher isn’t trying hard enough, damnit! And worse, it’s because they’re trying too hard with that writer there, that ungrateful bastard whose wouldn’t recognise a coherent sentence if it danced the polka on his bellybutton wearing stiletto heels, your bloody publisher is wasting there time on him and you’ve got to stand at a party and hold a drink and smile… keep on smiling… at that… bloody… useless… writer!!
And so on.
Me – I don’t know many fantasy writers. Instead I have something of the opposite problem to the one described above. In my work as a lampie, and more commonly in my condition (now ended, yay!!) of being a perpetual student, not even the black leather jacket seems enough to let people actually believe a word I say, when I say I am a fantasy writer. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that I am forced not only to admit to being a writer, but a fantasist too – and thus open to mis-understanding. I mean, for a start, admitting that I’m a writer isn’t something that comes up commonly in conversation.
“So, you’re the lighting technician?” quoth your average theatre profession.
“Yes, I am,” I reply.
“How many watts can the dimmers take before they trip?”
“2.4 kW, but personally I think they’ll bite the dust at 1.8.”
“Really, really, that’s interesting… uh, incidentally, you aren’t a fantasy writer, are you?”
… is not a line of conversation that ever really crops up. And that’s absolutely fine with me, since, let’s face it, admitting that I dream of dragons will probably not enhance my street cred in the world of well-kept spanners and steel-capped boots. Keeping strategically schtum seems the way to go.
But every now and then the day ends and we all go down to the pub, or there’s a lunch break and so-and-so is talking about their hobbies and what they do for fun and someone asks me and… well… I can either lie (‘Yes, I like white-water rafting and keep a yoyo collection’) and try and bluff my way through the conversation, or I can own up to the fairly simple truth that I sorta like writing books for a living. First few times I admitted to this I expected a barrage of questions and a reasonable amount of shame – ‘you do what? What books? Why? And you call yourself a lampie when you’ve betrayed the sacred cause to have another career on the side?! Get back to Mordor, loser!’ But actually the truth is far more mundane. 90% of people I admit this to, ignore it. Blithely skip over the sentence to the point where I sometimes wonder if I’ve uttered it. Which is sometimes a bit of a blessed relief, as it saves having to explain the whole psudonym, writing-business. And sometimes is utterly befuddling. I mean, as hobbies go, professional novelist is, if nothing else, a conversation starter and I’ll be the first to admit that socially, I’m pretty damn rubbish and any starter will do. (I write much better than I speak. And tragically, write other people much better than I write myself. Sigh.) But generally polite moving-on is the order of the day, and I sometimes leave wondering whether the thought in the mind of the person I’ve admitted this to isn’t ‘yeah… fantasist… says it all…‘
Perhaps its not. Perhaps it really is just that daft a profession that really, there’s nothing to be said. Or perhaps not even a black leather jacket is enough to earn a reputation for writing… perhaps the time has come to go to the next level of fantasy-writer nerd-tastic, and I should learn how to back-comb the hair, or maybe just shave it off entirely, and see if that makes the difference…
