I’ve been dying to get this one off my chest. What better time than the fourth day of a nasty cold that has kept me indoors and away from other homo sapiens for too long.
The conversation, which has been occurring for years now, goes something like this:
I start chatting with someone who runs a graphic design/web design/advertising/digital marketing company. I tell them, or they are already aware, that I have written two novels and – more recently – a memoir. We talk about work for a while, and when it becomes clear that their output includes copywriting, I say, casually:
‘Do you ever use freelance writers?’
And they look at me, utterly baffled, and they say ‘You mean creative writing?’
And I open my mouth to reply, and they say ‘Oh no, we don’t do anything like that. What we do is commercial, technical.’
And I realise that because I once had some fiction published, they have automatically labelled me as someone who only knows how to write about ice creams melting and shadows dancing on walls and memories lost and found, and I couldn’t possibly turn my hand to anything else.
No matter that I’ve also written features, columns, news, reviews, websites, press releases, and newsletters. Sure, I’ve also written short stories, monologues, and performance pieces. But that’s because I’m, like duh, a writer. I write stuff.
I’m not sure how much clearer I can be about this without the strategic use of a baseball bat.
theoates
May 28, 2009
It is pretty sad that creative writers are not quite so appreciated, if creative writing was interspersed with factual writing it would make it much better; as is, I think fiction is underrated
lff12
July 1, 2009
I hugely agree with this. I was reading through an IT Skills “shortage” report (from http://www.itcork.ie/index.cfm/page/publications_downloads) recently and I couldn’t help noticing that almost consistently, 95% plus of the companies interviewed were unwilling to accept “transferable skills” from people applying for jobs. Yet the same companies are willing to accept self-labelled “experts” who list “equivalent experience” on their CVs without any certification of their (often non-existent) skills. In other words, they want stereotypes.
As somebody who has the misfortunate of working beside a clueless, useless, misogynist who is effectively totally unskilled but compensates with 10 years “experience”, whose only real skills are in fact working 25% hours fewer than required, coming in late 90% of the time, stinking because he only washes and combs his hair on Thursdays and wafting his stench around the office, its unfortunate that employers are so blinkered and unwilling to accept that a bright, ethusiastic person can be trained up to do anything, and many such “skillsets” are self-reported but non-existent.
Its sadder still that pages and pages of so-called recruitment “experts” advise people to depend on transferable skills rather than develop paper skils that the employers demand, even if they don’t reflect real ability levels.